lihvavy  of  €he  theological  ^tmimty 

PRINCETON  •  NEW  JERSEY 
PRESENTED  BY 

The  Estate  of  the 
Rev.  John  B.  Wiedinger 

BX  9843  .'h 5 4^362  1902 
Herford,  Brooke,  1830-1903, 
The  small  end  of  great 
problems 


THE  SMALL  END 

OF 

GREAT   PROBLEMS 


By 
BROOKE  HERFORD,  D.D. 


Sermons    of    Courage    and    Cheer 

Post  8vo 

The  Story  of  Religion  in  England 
Post  8vo 


THE  SMALL 
GREAT  PROBLEMS 


sr 


BROOKE  HERFORD,  D.D. 

LATE  MINISTER  OF  ROSSLYN  HILL  CHAPEL 

LONDON 

SOMETIME  PREACHER  TO  HARVARD 

UNIVERSITY,  U.S.A. 


LONGMANS,  GREEN,  AND  CO. 

91  and  93  FIFTH  AVENUE,  NEW  YORK 

LONDON  AND  BOMBAY 

1902 


Copyright,  1902,  by 
LONGMANS,  GREEN,  AND  CO. 


All  rights  reserved 


LANGUAGES   PRINTING   COMPANY,   NEW   YORK,   U.S.A. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I.      THE   SMALL   END   OF   GREAT   PROBLEMS      ....  I 

II.      THE   UNSEEN   THINGS   THE   MOST   REAL      ....  21 

III.  ON      BELIEF      IN      THINGS      WHICH      CANNOT      BE 

PROVED 25 

IV.  THE   MYSTERY   OF   MIND 5! 

V.      THE   VERIFICATIONS   OF   MIND 65 

VI.      THE   BUGBEAR   OF  THE   UNKNOWABLE        ....  77 

VII.      THE    REALITY     OF    REVELATION    AND    AUTHORITY  9I 

VIII.      THE   HUMAN    HEART    OF   GOD Ill 

IX.      THE    FOREORDINATION    OF    GOD .  125 

X.      THE    HEALING    FORCES    OF   GOD I39 

XI.      THE   world's*  debt    TO    CHRIST I53 

XII.      ANYTHING    NEW    IN    CHRISTIANITY? 169 

XIII.  ALL    THINGS  BEGINNINGS 183 

XIV.  THE   VEILED    LIFE    IN    MAN I95 

XV.      THE    MYSTERY    OF    GOODNESS 209 

XVI.      THE   MYSTERY    OF    PAIN          221 

XVn.      LIFE,    ON   THE   LINE   OF   LEAST    RESISTANCE        .      .  237 

XVIII.      ONE   OF  THE  MEANINGS  OF  GREAT  CATASTROPHES  251 

XIX.       IMMORTALITY,    WHETHER    WE     WISH     FOR    IT     OR 

NOT 263 

XX.      THE   NEARNESS   AND   REALITY   OF  THE  HEAVENLY 

W^ORLD 275 

XXI.      THE   INSPIRATIONS    OF   SCIENCE 289 


THE  SMALL  END  OF  GREAT 
PROBLEMS 

My  thought  is  one  for  the  simpHfying  of  the 
problems  and  perplexities  of  life.  You  know 
what  these  are :  —  problems  of  duty ;  problems 
of  religion;  problems  of  Nature  and  of  life  — 
of  what  Life  is,  and  what  it  is  for,  and  of  what 
is  going  to  be  the  end  of  it;  problems  of  man 
and  of  God  —  of  time  and  of  eternity.  Grad- 
ually, this  idea  has  shaped  itself  out  to  me  — 
of  how  much  the  problems  and  perplexities  of 
life  would  be  simplified  if  people  would  only 
take  hold  of  them  at  the  small  end. 

You  see  we  stand  at  a  sort  of  centre.  Each 
life  is  central  to  the  whole  universe.  From  each 
little  centre  of  your  or  my  life,  the  Universe 
stretches  away  infinitely.  Things  seem  pretty 
plain  just  where  we  are,  but  as  they  stretch  away 
into  the  distance  they  lose  themselves  in  an  ho- 
rizon of  mystery.  And  even  that  horizon  is  not 
the  end,  but  suggests  infinite  distances  beyond, 
entirely  out  of  our  ken.  Our  outlook  is  like  the 
wedge-shaped  track  of  light  cast  from  a  lantern 


2  THE   SMALL   END   OF   GREAT   PROBLEMS 

into  the  darkness.  It  is  small,  but  very  bright 
close  to,  then  as  it  widens  out  it  becomes  con- 
stantly dimmer,  and  at  last  it  is  wholly  lost. 

It  is  perfectly  true  that  the  same  laws  hold 
good,  the  same  truths  are  true  from  the  centre 
to  the  circumference;  but  it  is  one  thing  to  be 
sure  that  the  same  law  and  truth  are  there,  away 
at  the  infinite  end  of  things  out  of  sight,  and 
quite  another  to  be  able  to  see  how  the  law  and 
truth  apply  there. 

For  instance  —  take  gravitation.  I  can  make 
out  something  of  what  gravitation  means,  close 
here,  as  it  works  in  what  we  call  "  weight  '* 
and  in  the  forces  which  cause  things  to  stand 
or  fall.  But  when  I  follow  it  out  and  try  to 
realise  what  gravitation  means  between  stars 
millions  of  millions  of  miles  apart,  my  mind  gets 
dazed ;  and  when  I  follow  it  out  further  yet,  into 
the  abstract  question  of  what  gravitation  is,  and 
how  it  is  related  to  the  absolute  cause  and  force 
of  this  vast  universe,  then  my  mind  is  simply 
lost,  I  cannot  even  form  an  idea  about  that. 
Well,  my  point  is,  that  if  you  want  to  get  any 
real  practical  hold  of  this  idea  of  gravitation, 
you  must  study  it  first  at  the  smaller  end  of  it, 
close  about  us. 

You  will  see  the  value  of  keeping  this  clearly 
in  view  when  you  remember  that  strange  as  it 


THE   SMALL   END   OF   GREAT   PROBLEMS  3 

may  seem,  this  is  not  the  natural  way.  The 
near  and  the  simple  are  the  last  things  that  af- 
fect the  mind.  Man  is  constantly  wanting  to 
begin  at  the  big  end  of  things  and  of  thoughts. 
In  the  beginning  of  knowledge,  man's  mind  is 
confident  and  wants  to  spread  itself.  The  child 
thinks  it  could  manage  the  household  very  well. 
The  raw  recruit  would  willingly  undertake  to 
be  General.  If  you  have  any  literary  gift,  you 
are  apt  to  feel  as  if  you  could  write  a  book 
that  should  at  once  be  a  success.  When  I  first 
started  to  preach,  I  had  a  profound  conviction 
that  if  I  could  only  get  a  fair  hearing  I  could 
convert  the  human  race.  At  twenty-one,  one 
would  undertake  to  run  the  Universe.  We  want 
to  spread  ourselves  on  the  large  circumference 
of  things.  So  in  Art.  Simplicity  is  not  the 
first  grace  of  Art,  but  the  last  and  finest  per- 
fection of  it.  The  savage  pays  small  attention 
to  the  flower  at  his  feet,  but  gazes  with  intens- 
ity of  wonder  on  the  lightning  flash  or  the 
comet.  And  it  is  not  only  youth  and  savagism 
that  think  in  this  inverted  order.  Philosophy 
began  at  the  large  end  of  its  problems  —  with 
large  general  speculations.  Thales  would  have 
it  that  water  was  the  fundamental  essence  of 
the  universe;  Anaximenes  found  it  in  air; 
Pythagoras    sought    it    in    the    mystic    relations 


4  THE   SMALL   END  OF   GREAT   PROBLEMS 

of  numbers.  They  began  with  such  faraway 
generalizations,  and  only  quite  gradually 
worked  down  to  the  close  facts  of  nature.  Also 
with  the  old  theologians.  They  were  always 
constructing  vast  theories  of  abstract  Divinity, 
but  had  little  eye  for  what  God  is  actually  do- 
ing, here  and  now. 

So  the  true  order  of  thinking  and  living  needs 
continually  emphasizing  —  from  the  small  to 
the  great,  from  the  near  to  the  far,  from  the 
known  to  the  unknown,  from  fact  to  theory, 
from  sight  to  faith :  study  and  attempt  the  prob- 
lems of  life  from  the  small,  near  end  of  them. 

In  some  realms  of  inquiry,  in  some  of  the 
directions  of  man's  restless  thought,  we  have 
come  to  a  pretty  clear  understanding  of  this 
principle.  It  is  so  in  Science  for  instance. 
That  is  what  makes  the  science  of  the  present 
day  such  a  noble  and  useful  thing.  The  science 
of  the  ancients  did  not  amount  to  much,  not  be- 
cause it  had  not  got  far  enough  —  it  had  got 
further  than  many  people  are  aware  —  but  be- 
cause it  began  at  the  wrong  end.  It  began 
with  those  ideas  of  some  vague  universal  es- 
sence —  air,  water,  numbers,  —  and  worked 
down  from  those  far  off  theories  to  the  facts 
of  nature  close  at  hand;  and  of  course  it  made 
a   pretty   poor    mess    of    the    facts.     Now    the 


THE   SMALL   END   OF   GREAT   PROBLEMS  5 

science  of  the  present  day  is  so  hopeful  because 
it  grapples  with  the  mystery  of  Nature  at  its 
small,  near  end.  It  begins  with  the  palpable 
facts  close  about  us.  Newton  studies  the  falling 
apple  and  comes  nearer  the  explanation  of  the 
solar  system,  than  any  one  had  ever  done  be- 
fore. Franklin  draws  down  a  little  lightning 
to  his  own  knuckles,  and  observes  it  there. 
When  Darwin  wants  to  find  out  how  things 
have  come  to  be,  he  sets  to  work  to  see  how 
they  are  coming  and  becoming  now.  A  thou- 
sand careful  observers  are  watching  the  tiny 
facts  of  plant  and  insect,  of  rock  and  shell;  the 
exact  fall  of  rain,  the  precise  direction  and 
force  of  the  wind  currents.  Nothing  is  too 
common  or  too  small.  The  roadside  pebble, 
the  lump  of  coal,  the  seed-vessel  of  a  dandelion, 
the  chemistry  of  a  rain  drop  —  there  is  nothing 
more  beautiful  than  the  way  in  which  modern 
science  teaches  men  respect  for,  and  interest  in 
the  tiny  fact  close  at  their  feet.  When  Science 
has  also  learned  that  the  thought  and  feeling 
in  a  man's  heart  is  as  much  a  fact,  a  reality,  as 
the  stone  at  his  feet,  then  shall  we  be  in  about 
as  fair  a  way  as  we  can  be  —  I  do  not  say  for 
actually  solving  the  problem  of  Being,  but  for 
solving  as  much  of  it  as  is  within  man's  scope 
at  all. 


6  THE   SMALL   END   OF   GREAT   PROBLEMS 

In  morals  too  —  questions  of  right  and  duty 
—  the  modern  world  is  becoming  familiar  with 
this  principle  of  taking  hold  of  problems  by 
their  small  near  end.  I  think  that  this  is  largely 
due  to  Christianity.  For,  if  you  look  into  it^ 
you  will  see  that  this  is  the  very  spirit  of  Christ, 
both  in  regard  to  the  simplest  matters  of  doing 
right  and  the  most  complicated  problems  of 
Christian  thought.  Christ  did  not  indeed  speak 
of  *'  problems  "  or  of  taking  hold  of  them  at 
this  nearer  end.  But  he  was  always  doing  it, 
and  teaching  men  to  do  it.  The  beginning  of 
the  Kingdom  of  God,  he  shews  is  as  small  as  a 
mustard  seed.  The  place  to  grapple  with  sin, 
is  not  at  the  circumference  of  action,  but  at 
the  centre  of  thought.  It  had  been  said  by  them 
of  old  time  ''  Thou  shalt  not  kill."  Christ  puts 
it  — ''  You  must  take  hold  of  that  matter  at  a 
smaller  end  than  that  —  you  must  not  even  be 
angry."  The  angry  feeling  he  puts  as  the 
smaller  end  of  the  murderous  deed.  So  with 
all  moral  questions.  Christ  brought  the  right 
and  wrong  of  things  down  from  the  clouds  to 
the  earth,  from  the  traditions  of  the  Rabbis  to 
the  common  sense  of  the  common  people.  They 
were  working  out  their  Sabbath  law  by  ab- 
stract theorising  from  some  supposed  Divine 
Will    in    the    beginning    of    Creation,  — "  The 


THE    SMALL   END   OF    GREAT    PROBLEMS  7 

Sabbath  was  made  for  man/'  said  Jesus,  and 
brought  the  question  down  to  what  is  good  for 
you  and  me  to-day.  So,  that  golden  summing 
up  of  duty  —  "  Whatsoever  ye  would  that  men 
should  do  to  you,  do  ye  even  so  to  them  "  —  that 
was  not  a  maxim  of  mutual  axe-grinding,  but 
the  bringing  of  the  great  problem  of  righteous- 
ness to  its  smallest  end,  just  where  it  touches  me 
and  my  neighbour.  And  so  of  deeper  ques- 
tions. Some  one  asked  him  "  Lord,  are  there 
few  that  be  saved?"  Why,  that  was  just  one 
of  those  problems  which  at  the  larger  end  cover 
the  whole  vista  of  Eternity.  But  Christ  would 
not  even  touch  it  at  that  larger  end.  Simply  — 
"  Strive  thou  to  enter  in  at  the  strait  gate  "  — 
just  the  small  personal  end  of  that  great  prob- 
lem. And  what  a  helpful  saying  that  is  for 
those  who  are  perplexing  themselves  over  large 
abstract  religious  questions  —  *'  If  a  man  will 
do  God's  will,  he  shall  know  of  the  doctrine." 
Do  the  best  you  can  —  just  do  that ;  begin  with 
the  small  near  thing  where  you  can  see  it,  and 
the  way  will  clear,  the  larger  principle  or  doc- 
trine will  open  out  to  you. 

There  is  the  marvellous  thing  in  Christ  —  his 
mighty  opening  of  man's  thought  to  the  Divine 
surroundings  and  infinities  of  life  —  while  yet 
constantly  bringing  men  down  to  the  common 


8  THE   SMALL   END  OF   GREAT   PROBLEMS 

things  close  about  them  as  the  way  to  that 
Divine.  Often  men  would  like  to  stay  up  in 
the  cloudlands  of  Divine  mystery  —  but  Chris- 
tianity won't  let  them.  It  keeps  bringing  them 
back  to  the  work  and  the  neighbour  and  the 
little  child.  Christianity  is  doing  this  to-day. 
It  is  just  this  which  is  making  society  impatient 
of  mere  abstruse  creeds,  which  is  making  the 
churches  crave  less  of  the  Apocalypse  and  more 
of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount;  and  which  so  is 
making  them  less  divided  in  their  interpretations 
of  the  Heavenly  Mysteries  and  more  united  in 
trying  at  this  nearer  end  of  things  to  make  this 
common  world  a  more  wholesome,  honest,  and 
happier  place. 

And  yet,  clear  as  this  principle  stands  in  Chris- 
tianity, there  are  plenty  of  moral  questions  in 
which  men  still  confuse  themselves,  just  for  lack 
of  it!  Take  for  instance  the  small  deceits  and 
sharp  practices  of  trade  —  I  do  not  mean  the 
great  criminal  dishonesties,  but  the  small  de- 
ceptions and  over-reachings  which  no  law  can 
punish  and  yet  which  will  not  stand  the  light. 
How  do  good  men  persuade  themselves  into  do- 
ing these  questionable  things?  Not  how  do  bad 
men  do  them,  no  difficulty  about  that,  but  how 
do  good  men  do  them?  Well,  you  will  find 
that  it  is  very  much  by  looking  at  the  larger 


THE   SMALL   END   OF   GREAT   PROBLEMS  9 

end  of  the  problem.  They  take  the  large 
numerical  aspect  of  it;  they  say  to  them- 
selves "  everybody  does  these  things  —  here  is 
the  universal  custom  —  we  did  not  make  it,  and 
we  cannot  alter  it."  You  see,  by  looking  at  the 
little  half-penny  dishonesty  at  the  big  end,  it 
comes  to  seem  almost  respectable,  like  a  sort  of 
unalterable  law  of  nature! 

So  it  is  with  numbers  of  moral  problems. 
Look  at  them  at  the  large  end,  as  vast  abstract 
problems,  and  you  will  be  very  apt  to  get  con- 
fused; but  look  at  them  at  the  small  near  end, 
as  simple  questions  of  truth  and  right  between 
yourself  and  those  you  are  concerned  with  — 
and  —  I  do  not  say  you  will  always  find  it  easy 
to  do  the  right  thing,  but  at  any  rate  you  will 
not  often  be  in  much  doubt  as  to  what  the  right 
thing  is. 

The  same  principle  would  often  help  us  in 
solving  the  problems  of  the  larger  life,  of  peo- 
ples. How  many  of  the  high  flying  social 
theories  by  which  enthusiasts  would  regenerate 
the  world,  collapse  the  moment  you  take  hold 
of  them  and  try  them,  at  their  smaller  end. 
What  a  fine  thing  Communism  appears,  at  the 
big  end  of  it  —  all  the  good  things  of  the  world 
divided  fairly  among  all  —  plenty,  surely,  for 
everybody.     Do  you  wonder  that  men,   sad  at 


10  THE  SMALL  END  OF   GREAT   PROBLEMS 

the  want  and  woe  of  earth  have  dreamed  of 
Communism  as  the  remedy?  But  look  at  it  at 
the  smaller  end  —  what  it  would  really  mean  to 
the  individual.  I  am  afraid  it  would  not  be 
much  more  than  it  brought  to  that  Communistic 
workman,  who  in  a  stage  coach  in  Germany  — 
having  no  idea  who  the  passenger  in  the  corner 
was  —  began  to  denounce  Baron  Rothschild, 
with  his  forty  million  thalers  of  property. 
"What  right  has  he  to  all  that"  he  said;  ''it 
is  robbery,  it  belongs  to  the  people!  " 

By  and  bye  Rothschild  looked  up  from  his  cor- 
ner and  said :  —  "  How  many  people  are  there 
in  Germany?  " 

Someone  supplied  the  information  that  there 
were  about  forty  millions.  "  Well,  well,"  said 
the  old  Banker,  "  then  that  is  just  a  thaler 
apiece.  Here,  my  good  friend,"  he  continued, 
pulling  out  his  purse :  "  I  am  Rothschild,  and 
here  is  your  thaler.  Now  you  are  settled  with." 
Yes,  a  few  thalers  apiece  and  a  great  deal  less 
of  stimulus  and  scope  for  personal  effort  —  I 
am  afraid  that  would  be  all  of  it,  at  the  smaller 
end. 

Or  do  you  want  to  know  how  equality  is 
suited  to  human  beings?  Study  it  in  the  nur- 
sery or  the  playground.  Said  Lycurgus  to  one 
who  advised  that  a  democracy  should  be  set  up 


THE    SMALL   END   OF    GREAT    PROBLEMS  II 

in   Sparta  — ''  My   friend,   try  a   democracy  in 
your  own  house !  " 

In  fact,  is  not  the  real  solution  of  all  the 
great  problems  of  National  life,  just  at  this 
smaller  end?  The  problem  of  good  government 
has  to  be  solved  in  the  ward  meeting.  The  man 
must  be  grappled  with  in  the  child.  When  the 
Duke  of  Wellington  saw  the  Eton  boys  playing 
football,  as  if  their  lives  depended  on  it,  he  said 
**  That  is  where  the  battle  of  Waterloo  was 
won ! "  The  witty  Frenchman  went  further 
back  still,  and  said  "  If  you  want  to  reform  a 
man,  you  must  begin  with  his  Grandmother." 
But  seriously,  is  it  not  the  case  that  almost  all 
the  problems  of  national  well-being  have  their 
solution  in  some  smaller  matter  of  personal 
faithfulness  and  right-doing?  That  is  a  good 
proverb  the  Chinese  have,  which  somebody  has 
rendered  into  the  little  rhyme: — 

"  If  every  one  would  see, 

To  his  own  reformation, 
How  very  easily, 

You  might  reform  a  nation ! " 

The  same  with  Institutions.  Do  you  want  to 
start  some  movement  that  shall  live  and  grow? 
Be  content  to  begin  small.  For  my  part  I  am 
always  distrustful  of  an  institution  that  begins 


12  THE   SMALL   END   OF   GREAT   PROBLEMS 

large  with  a  fine  building,  a  great  staff  of  offi- 
cials and  so  forth.  I  have  sometimes  thought 
that  the  difference  between  the  Priest  and  Levite 
—  and  —  the  Good  Samaritan,  may  not  have 
been  that  the  Priest  and  Levite  were  so  much 
more  hard-hearted  but  only  that  they  were  the 
kind  of  people  who  do  not  care  to  grapple  with 
the  problem  of  doing  good  unless  they  can  take 
hold  of  the  large  end  of  it  and  do  a  great  lump 
of  good  all  at  once.  I  can  imagine  that  that 
priest  may  have  gone  home  and  told  his  fam- 
ily what  a  sad  sight  he  had  seen  —  a  poor  man 
robbed  and  half  murdered  lying  by  the  road- 
side —  such  a  sad  sight  indeed,  that  he  really 
could  not  trust  himself  to  go  any  nearer  .  .  . 
and  that  it  had  made  him  feel  that  there  ought 
to  be  a  society  started  to  deal  with  such  cases, 
which  had  been  sadly  too  common  on  that 
Jericho  road;  and  that  he  would  speak  to  High- 
priest  Caiaphas  about  it  and  get  him  to  be  presi- 
dent and  some  of  the  leading  Scribes  and  Phari- 
sees to  go  on  the  Committee,  and  they  would 
have  a  regular  patrol  staff  with  proper  ambu- 
lances. 

But  meanwhile  what  of  the  poor  wounded 
man?  Fortunately  for  him,  there  came  the 
Samaritan  by  that  way  —  and  he  was  one  who 
believed  in  taking  hold  of  the  problem  of  human 


THE   SMALL   END   OF   GREAT   PROBLEMS  1 3 

suffering  by  the  small  end  —  which  meant  help- 
ing that  poor  fellow  lying  there  —  giving  him 
some  of  the  oil  and  wine  out  of  his  own  lunch- 
basket  and  setting  him  on  his  own  beast  even 
though  he  himself  had  to  walk.  That  is  the 
true  principle  in  Philanthropy.  We  want  more 
Individualism,  less  Institutionalism.  The  sins 
and  troubles  of  the  world  are  not  going  to  be 
reached  en  masse.  It  has  mostly  to  be  one  by 
one,  heart  and  soul  work.  No  stateliest  asylum 
is  so  good,  either  for  the  orphans  or  even  (they 
are  finding  out)  for  the  blind  or  the  deaf,  as 
life  even  in  the  poorest  homes.  Be  sure  it  is 
a  needed  thing  you  have  in  view  and  then  never 
be  afraid  to  begin  small.  It  does  not  follow 
you  are  to  stay  small !  I  believe  in  a  large  en- 
terprising spirit,  but,  take  hold  of  these  practical 
problems  by  the  small  end. 

I  think  that  this  principle  has  its  most  deeply 
helpful  application  to  the  great  problems  of 
thought,  and  it  is  for  these  that  I  am  really 
speaking  of  it.  These  problems  of  God,  and 
Man,  and  the  Dim  Future  —  why,  the  minds 
of  men  are  aching  to-day  with  their  craving  to 
get  to  some  clear  strong  resting  place,  something 
that  they  can  feel  sure  of. 

Sometimes  in  despair,  they  try  to  give  up 
thinking  and  not  trouble  themselves.     But  they 


14  THE   SMALL   END   OF   GREAT   PROBLEMS 

cannot.  The  old  thoughts  come  back,  the  old 
questions,  the  old  mysteries.  It  is  one  of  the 
signs  of  man's  higher  nature  —  this  inability  to 
rest  in  the  near  and  the  actual  and  the  outward. 
Only,  let  our  thinking  begin  with  these  —  that 
is  my  point  —  and  then  it  will  at  least  have  a 
chance  of  coming  to  something. 

Why,  take  the  greatest  problem  of  all  —  that 
of  the  Being  of  God.  I  can  only  glance  at  it, 
for  my  object  is  not  to  work  out  full  answers  on 
these  subjects,  but  to  show  which  way  some 
answer  lies.  And  I  take  this  as  one  of  those 
deep  solemn  mysteries  which  in  all  ages  have 
set  man's  brain  throbbing  and  aching  in  the  en- 
deavour to  grasp  it.  What  does  it  mean,  to  say 
''  God?  "  Think  of  all  these  infinite  worlds,  that 
Milky  Way  with  its  flush  of  light  across  the  sky 

—  just  a  sort  of  sand-dust  of  worlds,  too  far 
off  for  any  figures  to  tell.  Can  you  think  of 
an  Infinite  Mind,  present  throughout  those 
awful  world  spaces,  and  age  upon  age,  through 
countless  cycles  of  eternity  —  still,   God  —  God 

—  unchanged,  the  same?  Why,  when  one  tries 
even  to  look  at  that  large  far  away  end  of  the 
problem,  one's  mind  only  grows  dizzy.  Often, 
when  I  have  tried  to  think  it  out,  so,  I  have  felt 
as  if  I  could  not  believe  anything.  But,  come 
to  the  nearer  end.     I  go  into  the  fields  in  the 


THE    SMALL    END   OF    GREAT    PROBLEMS  1 5 

summer  time.  I  take  up  a  wild  flower,  or  the 
folded  leaf  just  bursting  from  its  bud  sheath  — 
and  somehow  I  cannot  help  feeling  "  That  did 
not  make  itself;  something  meant  that."  I  can- 
not resist  that  flower.  It  speaks  to  me,  close  to, 
of  wisdom,  purpose,  beneficent  will.  I  look 
thus  at  the  smaller  end  of  the  great  problem, 
and  I  cannot  help  believing. 

Or  take  the  problem  of  Man.  What  is  man? 
What  can  he  do?  Can  man  do  anything?  Has 
he  really  any  will,  or  free  choice  of  his  own? 
Look  at  that  question  at  its  larger  end  as  an 
abstract  philosophical  problem  —  and  you  get 
lost  directly.  Start  from  that  far  off  abstrac- 
tion —  in  itself  quite  indisputable  —  that  God 
must  be  omniscient,  and  it  seems  quite  clear: 
therefore  He  must  know  all  that  man  will  do, 
and  therefore  man  can  only  do  that,  cannot  have 
any  real  choice  or  will.  Or  start  with  that  large 
consideration  of  Law;  Law  everywhere,  in 
everything  —  so  that  not  a  grain  of  sand  can 
get  out  of  its  place  in  this  vast  universe,  and 
try  how  that  will  fit  with  the  idea  of  there  being 
as  many  free  wills  as  there  are  human  beings  — 
a  thousand  million  wills,  separate,  distinct,  each 
going  its  own  way.  It  seems  absurd.  No! 
At  that  larger  end  of  things,  I  cannot  fit  in 
human  freedom,   either  with  God's  Omniscient 


l6  THE   SMALL   END   OF   GREAT   PROBLEMS 

Will  or  nature's  all-embracing  law.  But  bring 
your  thought  down  to  the  smaller  end,  of  your 
own  personal  surroundings  and  feelings,  and  you 
can  —  only  —  fit   freedom   in   with   these. 

Here  is  your  breakfast,  here  is  your  work. 
Consider  that  not  a  single  meal  or  a  single  day 
can  be  creditably  got  through  without  your  as- 
suming that  you  have  real  power  of  choice,  and 
recognise  that  this  universe  is  not  run  on  shams 
and  make-believes  —  and,  here,  at  the  small  near 
end  of  that  free-will  problem,  it  is  plain  enough. 
There  is  no  real  doubt.  You  are  not  a  mere  pair 
of  scales,  that  have  to  go  up  or  down  just  as  the 
heaviest  motives  are  put  in  here  or  there.  You 
are  a  person,  who  holds  the  scales  and  weighs 
motives,  and  then  decides.  The  world,  on  the 
larger  view  may  look  automatic,  but  at  the  small 
end  of  your  own  place  and  part  in  it,  you  know 
that  you  are  not  an  automaton. 

And  it  is  the  same  with  the  problem  of  all 
this  struggling,  sorrowing,  tempted,  sinning, 
multitudinous  human  life,  away  in  the  infinite 
beyond.  Have  you  ever  realised  how  that 
problem  of  human  destiny  has  pressed  on  the 
thinkers  of  man-kind  and  what  curious  answers 
they  have  sometimes  worked  out  to  it? 

In  the  Harvard  University  Library  and  in  the 
British    Museum,    there    is    a   little   treatise   by 


THE   SMALL   END   OF   GREAT   PROBLEMS  IJ 

Dr.  Lewis  Du  Moulin,  a  learned  Oxford  Pro- 
fessor, some  200  years  ago.  This  is  the  title  of 
it:  — 

"  Moral  Reflections  upon  the  number  of  the 
'*  elect  —  proving  plainly  from  Scripture  evi- 
"  dence  that  not  one  in  a  hundred  thousand,  nay 
''  probably  not  one  in  a  million,  from  Adam 
''  down  to  our  times,  shall  be  saved."  Think  of 
it  —  not  one  in  a  hundred  thousand  saved,  that 
certainly,  probably  not  one  in  a  million.  Now 
how  did  a  good  thoughtful  man  manage  to  rea- 
son himself  into  such  a  confusion,  which  makes 
us  shudder  to-day?  By  taking  hold  of  the  prob- 
lem at  the  large  far-away  end  of  it.  He  started 
with  some  vast  far  off  idea  of  Divine  decrees  — 
and  reasoning  back,  by  the  time  he  got  down 
to  man,  he  could  hardly  find  any  logically  saved. 
Well  —  how  are  we  to  answer  such  arguments? 
Are  we  to  go  off  with  them  into  that  vague,  vast 
region  of  abstract  thought  and  try  to  refute 
them  there?  No!  Take  hold  of  the  problem 
here  at  the  near,  human  end  of  it.  All  these 
men,  women  and  children  about  us,  take  them 
as  they  are;  none  altogether  good,  none  alto- 
gether bad;  has  the  dear  Lord  who  made  them 
nothing  in  store  for  them  but  endless  woe,  for 
all  but  one  in  a  hundred  thousand?  Somehow 
the  moment  we  look  at  the  problem  at  this  nearer 


l8  THE    SMALL    END   OF    GREAT    PROBLEMS 

end,   it  begins  to  grow  a  little  clearer,   a  little 
more  hopeful. 

Indeed  Christ's  whole  teaching  of  God  as  a 
heavenly  father  is  a  putting  of  the  subject  of 
God's  purposes  at  its  smaller  end.  By  our  own 
love  for  our  children  we  can  reach  out  towards 
the  larger  end  of  the  great  problem,  and  find  — 
not  indeed  knowledge,  but  a  happy  trust  as  to 
what  will  somehow  be  done  by  that  infinite  life 
which  "  fathers  and  mothers  "  this  great  Uni- 
verse of  Being.  I  do  not  think  even  John  Cal- 
vin himself  could  have  made  out  quite  such  a 
grim  theology  if  he  had  studied  those  divine 
decrees  from  this  end  of  them,  with  the  name 
Heavenly  Father  in  his  mind  and  a  little  child 
nestling  in  his  arms. 

The  practical  wisdom  of  all  this  is  here:  we 
are  finite  beings,  surrounded  by  infinity  and 
every  line  of  action,  observation,  thought,  along 
which  we  try  to  work  or  look,  soon  edges  off  to 
heights  and  depths  which  our  working  cannot 
attain,  nor  our  thinking  fathom.  Yet  close 
about  us  it  is  light.  A  little  circle  is  within 
our  reach.  Here  is  this  mighty  earth,  and  for 
the  life  of  us  we  cannot  tell  what  it  really  is,  or 
what  a  grain  of  it  is,  but  we  know  how  to  use 
it.     Here  is  our  own  life  and  we  do  not  know 


THE    SMALL   END   OF    GREAT    PROBLEMS  IQ 

what  life  is  —  but  we  know  what  Hving  is,  and 
how  we  may  live  just  here  to-day  so  as  to  find 
good  and  blessing.  Here  are  all  our  fellow 
creatures,  and  they  suggest  a  hundred  problems 
of  being  and  destiny  in  which  any  one  may  —  in 
about  ten  minutes  —  lose  himself  in  endless 
doubt ;  —  but  —  these  fellow  creatures  are  real 
enough  —  their  powers,  their  characters,  sor- 
rows, joys,  and  varied  interests  as  they  v^^eave  in 
w^ith  our  living,  there  is  no  indistinctness  about 
these.  —  Well,  here  is  our  dominion.  Within 
this  little  circle  close  to  us  let  us  live  the  best 
and  most  we  can  —  and  from  this  centre  feel  out 
our  way  towards  the  larger  relations  and  the 
infinite  life.  Begin  at  the  small  end  —  it  is  the 
true  way  both  in  practical  things  and  in  theo- 
retical. Even  in  all  the  solemn  infinite  mystery 
of  life,  do  not  turn  away  from  it,  do  not  try 
to  ignore  it  as  hopelessly  out  of  reach.  Only,  in 
looking  that  way  and  thinking  that  way,  keep 
a  firm  foot  on  the  solid  earth  and  a  close  grip 
of  your  brother's  hand.  Reverence  the  near 
close  facts  of  things  as  they  appear  to  your 
natural  eye  and  your  common  sense.  That  is 
the  way  to  the  highest  thought  and  truth.  Those 
highest  things  —  Being,  God  and  Destiny  —  are 
not  out  of  our  ken  if  we  will  feel  our  way 
towards  them  with  this  clue  of  believing  that 


20  THE   SMALL   END   OF   GREAT   PROBLEMS 

the  near  and  human  things  are  parts  of  the 
Divine,  and  indications  of  the  Divine.  Then 
will  our  very  recognition  of  all  that  is  best  in 
man  oblige  us  to  believe  in  God,  and  the  present 
life  will  lead  us  by  its  deepest  qualities  and  pos- 
sibilities to  faith  in  a  still  greater  future.  So 
comes  that  living,  confident  faith  which  the 
world  is  longing  for  to-day  —  a  faith  not  sus- 
pended as  it  were  from  some  dim  authority  of 
ancient  texts  but  a  faith  rooted  in  the  common 
need  and  longing  of  mankind;  a  faith  climbing 
upwards  through  plant  and  star,  and  through 
the  little  child  and  the  grown  man,  and  through 
the  long  growth  of  the  Bible,  and  the  perfect 
outcome  of  Christ  —  through  all  this,  climbing 
upward  to  the  Infinite  Fatherhood  and  the  eter- 
nal life  of  Heaven.  So  faith  grows  out  of  fact, 
and  in  the  growing  ever  verifies  itself,  and 
throws  back  on  the  fact  an  ever  nobler  mean- 
ing; and  thought  widens  and  life  grows  larger, 
and  the  world  of  man  moves  onwards  —  not  yet 
into  any  clear  knowledge,  indeed,  —  but  surely 
towards  it;  towards  it,  enough  to  make  us  sure 
that  our  faith  is  not  a  baseless  dream,  but  a 
true  light  that  lightens  towards  the  Infinite 
and  the  Divine. 


THE   UNSEEN    THINGS    THE    MOST 

REAL 

To  SOME  people  this  seems  like  reversing  the 
true  order  of  things.  To  look  at  things  which 
cannot  be  seen,  seems  to  them  rather  a  waste  of 
time.  "  Surely,"  they  say,  "  we  had  better  look 
at  what  can  be  seen !  "  Then,  to  talk  of  those 
unseen  things  as  the  "  eternal  "  things,  the  most 
absolutely  and  enduringly  real  —  seems  a 
dreamy  assertion  about  something  which  no- 
body can  really  know.  Yes,  I  know  that  is  how 
it  is  apt  to  seem  to  those  who  want  to  keep  to 
*'  facts  "  and  to  *'  things  which  can  be  proved." 
Yet  it  is  not  really  so;  and  I  want  our  thoughts 
to  rise  above  this  tyranny  of  the  seen  —  this 
impression  of  there  being  something  especially 
real  in  things  that  we  can  see  and  handle. 
Whereas,  when  we  consider  the  matter  at  all 
deeply,  it  is  really  exactly  the  other  way.  In 
putting  it  thus,  I  am  not  referring  just  to  the 
soul  and  God.  Those  later,  if  you  will.  But 
the  helpful  thing,  in  thinking  towards  those 
higher  unseen  things,  is  to  look  right  down  on 

21 


22  THE   UNSEEN   THINGS   THE   MOST   REAL 

the  earth,  among  the  common  things  that  are 
palpable  to  everyone,  and  to  find  that  it  is  in 
these  first  of  all  that  the  truth  comes  out  — 
that  it  is  not  anything  we  see  that  is  most  real 
and  lasting,  but  the  unseen  in  them.  Only,  per- 
haps when  we  find  this  so,  even  among  the  earth's 
common  visible  things,  it  may  help  us  to  follow 
the  same  truth  a  little  more  confidently,  in  its 
higher  relations  to  man  and  immortality  and 
God. 

Well,  look  how  it  is  among  these  common, 
visible  substances  of  the  world;  earth,  water, 
plant,  animal,  vegetable  fibre,  animal  tissue  — 
now,  are  these  eternal?  or,  do  not  let  us  use  the 
word  ''  eternal."  That  seems  to  be  carrying 
the  question  too  far.  Let  us  use  the  word  last- 
ing or  permanent,  which  only  carries  the 
thought  as  far  as  we  can  track  it.  Put  it,  then 
—  are  these  things,  earth,  water,  plant,  animal, 
and  so  forth  —  permanent  ?  Something  in 
them  is  —  but  —  precisely  not  that  which  you 
see.  That  which  you  see  is  constantly  chang- 
ing. The  face  of  the  world,  the  world  of  things 
that  you  see,  is  never  quite  the  same,  even  for 
two  days.  Every  leaf  is  changing,  and  in  a 
little  while,  as  a  leaf,  as  that  which  you  see,  it 
is  gone.  The  solid  lump  of  coal  vanishes  into 
flame  and  smoke,  which  you  only  see  for  a  mo- 


THE    UNSEEN    THINGS    THE    MOST    REAL  23 

merit,  and  into  gas  which  you  cannot  see  at 
all.  The  massive  stone  you  build  with,  is  eaten 
away  by  invisible  chemicals  in  the  air,  and 
slowly  decays.  What  do  we  mean  by  ''  de- 
cays?" Every  word  we  use  of  that  kind  is 
really  an  affirmation  of  this  very  thought  of 
Paul's,  of  something  unseen  which  is  what 
really  endures.  You  say:  the  coal,  the  solid 
building  stone,  are  not  destroyed,  they  still  exist 
in  other  forms.  True,  but  your  saying  so  only 
helps  my  showing  —  and  even  leads  it,  at  once, 
to  its  higher  bearings  —  for  what  is  it  that  fol- 
lows these  curious  processes,  and  tracks  them 
out?  What  is  it  in  you  and  me  which  traces 
the  coal,  on,  into  the  gas,  and  the  stone  into  in- 
visible chemical  elements?  Something  in  you 
and  me,  also,  which  is  invisible  —  not  this  mere 
hand,  or  this  mere  eye  —  something  invisible  in 
us.  Anyhow  —  the  seen  things,  the  visible 
substance,  is  but  for  a  time.  That  which  en- 
dures is,  certain  invisible  elements  in  these  seen 
things  and,  in  my  visible  body,  an  invisible  in- 
telligence that  follows  these  invisible  elements 
and  feels  that  they  are  the  lasting  realities. 

And  the  further  you  pursue  these  investiga- 
tions of  the  visible  things  of  the  world,  the 
more  curiously  true  you  find  this.  Why,  in- 
stead of  that  which  you  see  of  anything,  or  in 


24  THE    UNSEEN    THINGS    THE    MOST   REAL 

anything,  being  the  great  lasting  reaHty,  it  is 
only  a  mere  starting  point.  That  which  you  see 
is  only  of  any  consequence,  indeed  as  an  indi- 
cation of  things  which  you  cannot  see.  What 
is  science?  ''  Science"  is  the  name  we  give  to 
what  we  consider  the  most  certain  kind  of 
knowledge.  When  a  man  says  *'  this  or  that  is 
a  fact  of  science "  he  means  to  emphasize  its 
certainty  —  that  it  is  not  a  mere  supposition, 
but  something  there  is  no  mistake  or  doubt 
about.  And  yet  see  —  ''  Science  "  hardly  be- 
gins till  you  have  got  beyond  what  anyone  can 
see :  *'  Science  "  properly  so  called,  deals  not 
nearly  so  much  with  the  outward,  visible  sub- 
stances of  things,  as  with  their  qualities  and 
relations,  and  the  forces  at  work  in  them.  But 
what  are  qualities,  relations,  forces?  All,  un- 
seen things.  You  cannot  see  a  quality;  you 
cannot  see  a  force !  You  blow  out  a  candle  in  a 
room,  in  a  moment  the  smell  of  that  —  you 
know  how  it  is  in  every  corner  of  the  room  — 
yes,  that  is  mere  sensation  —  the  element  of 
science  comes  in,  in  your  working  your  way 
from  the  bare  fact  of  it  to  the  reason  of  it  —  to 
the  existence  of  some  force  of  expansion  in  the 
gases  thrown  out  by  the  smouldering  wick, 
which  at  once  disperses  those  particles  of  gas 
all  through  the  surrounding  space.     But  what 


THE   UNSEEN    THINGS   THE    MOST    REAL  2^ 

is  that  force?  What  really  is  any  force?  No- 
body knows.  The  moment  you  begin  to  talk 
about  forces  you  are  among  entirely  invisible 
things  and  yet  they  are  so  real  that  not  only  is 
science  sure  of  them,  but  the  greater  part  of 
science  is  concerned  with  forces;  and  the  great 
teachers  of  science  have  even  worked  it  out  that 
different  forces  can  be  changed  into  one  another, 
so  that  light  can  be  changed  into  heat  and  heat 
into  gravitation  and  so  forth  —  and  the  one 
thing  they  are  most  sure  of  is,  that  no  tiniest 
quantity  of  force  can  be  really  lost. 

You  see,  you  are  not  in  religion  here  —  you 
are  right  on  the  solid  earth  —  among  the  most 
elementary  facts  of  science,  down  in  the  realm  of 
the  commonest  substances  and  products  of  the 
outward  nature  —  and  yet  —  already  you  can- 
not move  a  step  without  coming  right  upon 
this  deep  fact  in  things  —  that  all  that  you  can 
see  is  temporal,  passing  and  changing  all  the 
time  —  that  it  is  what  is  unseen  in  them  and 
often  what  is  unsee-able  that  is  lasting,  perma- 
nent. 

Look  a  step  higher,  into  this  being  and  nature 
of  man,  and  we  are  in  the  midst  of  the  same 
truth,  coming  out  in  all  sorts  of  ways.  There  is 
the  same  changing  of  everything  visible  in  us 
—  and  yet  in  that  is  something  invisible,  which 


26  THE    UNSEEN    THINGS    THE    MOST    REAL 

curiously  remains.  You  know  how  the  visible 
body  is  changing  all  the  time.  I  meet  a  friend 
whom  I  have  not  seen  for  twenty  years.  We 
say  —  quite  confidently  —  how  glad  we  are  to 
see  each  other  again.  But  really,  we  do  not  see 
each  other  again.  Of  that  which  we  see,  there 
is  no  particle  that  we  ever  saw  before !  And  yet 
something  has  remained  the  same,  all  through 
those  20  years.  What  is  it  that  has  lasted  — 
this  '^  I,  myself,"  this  "  you  "  who  talk  with  me 
about  the  people  and  the  places  we  used  to  be 
interested  in  in  that  former  time?  What  is  it 
that  has  lasted?  Not  the  seen.  Of  that  which 
we  could  see,  or  which  anyone  could  see  then, 
nothing  remains  —  but  something  unseen  has 
remained.  Do  some  hesitate  to  call  it  soul? 
Call  it  mind,  call  it  ''  x  "  if  you  will,  the  Alge- 
braic sign  for  something  unknown.  A  little 
girl,  asked  what  her  soul  was,  answered  that  it 
was  "  her  think  "  —  but  whatever  you  call  that 
which  has  remained  in  my  friend  and  me,  our 
"  mind  "  our  "  soul  "  our  ''  think,"  it  is  some- 
thing invisible.  Really,  when  you  come  to  find 
how  rapidly  the  changing  of  all  the  visible, 
material  part  of  man  is  going  on,  the  case  is 
stronger.  Why,  one  who  knows  about  such 
things,  told  me  the  other  day  that  instead  of  the 
human  body  changing  once  in  seven  years  as 


THE   UNSEEN   THINGS   THE   MOST   REAL  2/ 

we  used  to  be  taught  at  school,  it  is  now  known 
that  it  hardly  lasts  a  year  —  much  of  it  is 
changing,  he  said,  every  few  weeks;  flesh  and 
muscle  are  dispersed  and  replaced  every  four 
months  or  so,  and  I  remember  being  especially 
struck  by  his  saying  that  as  for  the  heart,  so 
tremendous  is  the  wear  and  tear  of  its  constant 
action  that  probably  every  particle  of  its  sub- 
stance is  worn  away  and  replaced  in  60  days. 
But  meanwhile  there  is  something  in  this  con- 
stantly changing  body  which  does  not  change  — 
something  which  moves  along  through  the  years, 
something  which  keeps  the  body  united  and  ac- 
tive, gathering  from  the  surrounding  universe 
just  the  due  particles  and  welding  them  in, 
something  which  is  in  these  things,  and  yet  is 
more  than  any  or  all  of  them,  and  keeps  this 
curious  personal  identity  of  you  and  me  while 
all  that  is  visible  of  you  and  me  is  swiftly  and 
constantly  changing.  The  scientist  does  not 
know  what  this  "  something  "  is  —  he  tells  you 
frankly  that  he  does  not  begin  to  know.  It  is 
something  his  microscope  cannot  see,  his  chemi- 
cal tests  cannot  find  any  trace  of.  They  have 
ransacked  the  body  through  and  through  and 
they  cannot  discover  it  —  and  yet  that  invisible 
element  in  us  is  the  lasting  thing. 

You  may  follow  out  the  same  thought  as  it 


28  THE   UNSEEN    THINGS   THE    MOST   REAL 

touches  not  the  substance  of  us  but  our  actions, 
and  still  it  is  always  true  that  the  seen  things 
are  passing,  transient,  the  unseen  things  the 
most  lasting  and  real.  Can  you  remember  that 
bad  cut,  or  that  wound  you  had  when  a  youth? 
Terribly  painful,  was  it  not?  yes,  but  it  does  not 
hurt  you  now.  Perhaps  there  is  a  scar  of  it,  but 
it  is  not  painful.  But  see  —  was  there  some 
great  sin  that  you  committed  when  a  youth? 
That  made  no  mark  —  not  as  much  visible  mark 
as  the  cut  of  a  finger,  even ;  —  but  was  it,  then, 
nothing?  Why,  you  feel  the  pain,  the  pang  of 
it  to-day !  Years  have  passed  —  you  have  re- 
pented that  sin  —  perhaps  you  have  put  it  ut- 
terly away,  and  you  feel  that  God  has  forgiven 
you  —  but  still  it  haunts  you  at  times  with  a 
haunting  pain,  which  is  entirely  unseen,  which 
has  nothing  visible  about  it  —  and  yet,  how  it 
lasts!  —  Yes,  it  is  the  unseen  things  that  are 
most  permanent! 

And  even  in  that  larger  human  action  which 
we  call  History,  we  may  find  illustrations  of  the 
same  truth.  It  is  not  the  great  visible  institu- 
tions of  the  world  that  are  most  permanent. 
Think  of  that  great  Roman  Empire,  in  one 
obscure  little  corner  of  which  Christianity  was 
born !  A  vast,  orderly  Empire  —  with  its  law 
courts   and   its   wide,    intricate   commerce  —  its 


THE   UNSEEN   THINGS   THE    MOST   REAL  29 

war  office,  its  navy  department,  its  ordered 
government  reaching  from  Persia  to  Britain, 
from  the  forests  of  Germany  to  the  deserts  of 
Africa  —  such  an  intricate  net-work  of  soHd, 
responsible  rule,  that  not  a  village  official  in 
the  furthest  corner  of  the  empire  can  scourge 
a  Roman  citizen,  however  poor,  without  trem- 
bling in  his  shoes  for  fear  it  should  be  re- 
ported!—  And  there,  in  one  of  those  furthest 
corners,  in  obscure  Nazareth,  and  Capernaum 
—  there  is  a  little  religious  movement  among  a 
few  unknown  men,  a  wandering  preacher  fol- 
lowed by  little  crowds  of  country  people  for  a 
year  or  so,  and  then  put  to  death;  a  company 
of  earnest  believers  clinging  to  his  memory  — 
drawing  together  in  his  name  and  trying  to  per- 
suade other  men  to  join  them.  The  whole  thing 
so  invisible,  on  the  visible  scale  of  history,  that 
the  great  world  knew  nothing  of  it  for  near  a 
hundred  years;  hardly  one  word  about  it  even 
then  in  the  public  history  of  the  time.  *'  But  the 
things  which  are  seen  are  temporary;  the  things 
which  are  not  seen  are  permanent."  That 
mighty  world-organism  of  the  Roman  Empire 
passed  away  —  is  now  a  mere  curious  study  of 
the  past.  That  silent  invisible  force  which  we 
call  ''faith"  and  "love"  and  ''hope"  which 
wrought  there  in  Jesus  and  his  handful  of  fol- 


30  THE   UNSEEN    THINGS   THE    MOST   REAL 

lowers  —  that  unseen  thing  lasted,  lasts  yet,  is 
living  still  to-day  —  is  working  in  a  million 
hearts  and  lives.  It  is  not  working  as  one  longs 
for  it  to  do,  and  yet  I  think  it  is  about  the  most 
potent  force  of  good  in  human  life !  It  has  kept 
pleading  through  the  ages  and  is  pleading  still, 
for  justice  and  mercy  and  all  kind  and  loving 
charity;  it  has  kept  before  men  a  higher  ideal  of 
all  pure  and  upright  life,  given  a  new  remorse 
for  sin,  a  higher  reverence  for  human  life;  and 
here  to-day  it  is  making  you  and  me,  and  mil- 
lions more,  a  little  more  earnest  in  seeing  the 
right  and  doing  it,  and  sending  thousands  and 
tens  of  thousands  out  among  the  sinful  and  the 
suffering  on  errands  of  helping  and  healing  and 
trying  to  make  the  world  a  little  happier  and 
better. 

And  so,  wherever  we  can  follow  the  changes 
in  matter  or  in  man,  from  the  elements  which 
combine  to  make  a  leaf  or  the  forces  which 
vibrate  through  the  vast  of  nature  to  the  some- 
thing of  a  subtler  personal  life  which  lasts 
through  the  changing  growth  of  man  and  even 
throbs  through  history  —  you  have  constant  il- 
lustrations of  this  great  saying  of  Paul's;  that 
the  things  which  are  seen  are  temporary,  but  the 
things  which  are  not  seen  are  permanent. 

I  do  not  mean,  of  course,  that  Paul  worked 


THE   UNSEEN    THINGS   THE    MOST   REAL  3 1 

all  this  out,  and  thought  of  it,  just  as  his  words 
have  set  me  thinking  of  it.  Paul  came  upon 
that  thought  right  up  in  the  highest  reaches  of 
it,  at  once,  leaping  as  it  were  by  one  great  bound 
of  inspired  insight,  from  the  perishing  man 
which  was  all  that  could  be  seen,  to  the  latent 
invisible  child  of  God,  which  he  could  not  help 
believing  was  in  everyone;  and  from  the  visible 
earthly  state,  to  an  infinite  life  ''  which  eye  hath 
not  seen  nor  ear  heard."  But  do  not  let  his 
high  thought  be  depreciated  because  he  came 
upon  it  so,  in  the  heights !  That  is  how  men  al- 
ways come  upon  the  highest  thoughts,  even  in 
science  and  philosophy  and  morals  and  every- 
thing! To  Copernicus,  watching  down  among 
the  visible  movements  of  earth  and  stars,  which 
a  hundred  eyes  were  following,  suddenly  there 
comes  a  new  thought  of  them  —  a  great  unify- 
ing thought,  which  after  long  trying  to  make 
sure  of,  he  tells  to  the  wondering  and  at  first 
incredulous  world.  Somewhat  so,  to  Paul, 
plodding  on  in  those  old  Roman  streets,  or  sit- 
ting in  the  sailmaker's  workshop,  or  the  Philippi 
jail  —  and  taking  refuge  from  his  weariness  or 
the  pain  of  his  sore  scourging  in  thoughts  of 
Christ  and  the  great  blessed  Heaven  where  he 
would  like  to  be  with  him  —  suddenly  there 
would  come  upon  him  the  sense  of  how  all  this 


32  THE   UNSEEN   THINGS   THE   MOST   REAL 

visible  world  was  but  a  passing  vision  compared 
with  the  rich  and  grand  realities  of  God  —  and 
in  such  an  hour  —  and  one  fancies,  out  of  many 
such  hours  —  flashed  up  this  thought  and  this 
great  expression  of  it,  that  "  we  look  not  at  the 
things  which  are  seen,  but  at  the  things  which 
are  not  seen:  for  the  things  which  are  seen  are 
temporal;  but  the  things  which  are  not  seen  are 
eternal ! " 

Of  course  I  am  not  giving  what  I  have  said  as 
any  proof !  Nature  supplies  no  proof  of  that  ab- 
solute categorical  kind  in  anything  of  man's 
higher  life.  At  the  most,  what  Nature  gives 
are  suggestions,  confirmations  of  any  great 
thought  such  as  this.  Paul  never  proved  it; 
but  he  believed  it,  was  certain  that  it  was  so, 
lived  by  it,  inspired  others  to  live  by  it;  and  the 
fruit  of  it,  in  stronger,  nobler,  living  in  the 
ages  since,  has  been  so  sound  as  to  suggest  that 
it  must  be  really  rooted  in  the  realities  of  the 
great  world-order.  And  now  we  try  to  look  at 
its  roots  —  and  is  it  no  help  to  us,  is  it  no  con- 
firmation of  our  thought,  to  find  that  even  down 
among  the  basal  facts  of  plant  and  animal  and 
of  man's  mere  earthly  life  the  very  same  thing 
is  constantly  true,  as  far  as  we  can  trace?  Al- 
ways something  within  the  seen,  deeper  than  the 
seen,  something  that  we  cannot  see  in  itself  — 


THE   UNSEEN    THINGS   THE   MOST   REAL  33 

but  yet  we  can  see  that  that  invisible  something 
is  what  lasts  and  is  most  permanent!  The  very- 
elements  that  constitute  a  leaf;  the  gases  into 
which  a  lump  of  coal  may  be  dispersed ;  —  the 
something  —  mind,  soul,  life,  or  what  you  will, 
which  lives  on  through  a  score  of  changes  in 
everything  that  makes  up  the  human  body  — 
No !  these  do  not  prove  that  unseen  something  is 
to  live  on,  even  past  the  body's  final  collapse. 
No!  But  such  things  everywhere  in  Nature 
send  me  back  to  the  teachings  of  Paul  and  of 
Paul's  greater  Lord,  with  a  renewed  confidence 
—  confidence  that  their  grand  words  of  an  un- 
dying life  wxre  not  the  inflated  guesses  of  con- 
ceit but  the  inspired  insight  of  the  pure  in  heart. 
And  there  I  rest  —  there  where  so  many  hearts 
have  rested  through  the  ages,  I  would  have  us 
all  to  rest.  By  all  means  let  us  investigate 
everything  to  the  furthest  that  we  can.  Look 
into  all  this  wonderful  science  which  is  the 
glory  of  our  time;  only  take  in  as  really  part 
of  it  not  just  the  heiroglyphics  of  stone  and 
plant  and  star,  but  the  far  clearer  writing  in  the 
conscious  life  of  man.  Yes,  certainly  God  made 
the  stone  and  plant  and  star,  and  what  they  tell 
me  is  surely  His  Word,  but  just  as  surely  he 
made  man,  and  his  meeting  is  plainer  in  the 
great  trend  of  human  thought;   and   in   God's 


34  THE   UNSEEN   THINGS   THE   MOST   REAL 

holiest,  the  word  comes  out  not  in  such  broken 
syllables  as  I  can  spell  from  rock  or  plant  but 
in  great  golden  sentences  of  light  that  make  a 
glory  wherever  they  shine  into  man's  heart  and 
life.  So  let  us  have  faith ;  Life  is  not  a  delusion 
even  at  its  lowest  —  let  us  not  fear  that  it  can 
play  us  false  at  its  highest.     As  Emerson  said  — 

" All  things  excellent, 

As  God  lives,  are  permanent." 

The  "  life  to  come  is  just  as  real  as  this  —  yes, 
it  is  this  —  this  —  lasting  not  only  beyond  the 
body  of  to-day,  or  of  next  year,  but  beyond  all 
visible  things,  among  the  unseen  things  which 
are  eternal! 


ON    BELIEF    IN    THINGS    WHICH 
CANNOT    BE    PROVED 

In  the  old  time,  men  asked  for  ''  signs.'*  In 
these  days  what  they  ask,  is,  proof.  I  do  not 
think  it  is  an  ''  evil  generation,"  and  its  doubt, 
especially,  is  honest  and  earnest  doubt.  But 
certainly  it  is  a  generation  that  seeks,  after  its 
better  fashion,  for  a  ''  sign."  Men  come  to 
Christianity  as  once  those  Jews  came  to  Christ. 
''  We  want  all  this  unmistakably  proved,"  they 
say.  ''  These  thoughts  and  feelings  which 
claim  such  authority  over  life,  —  belief  in  God 
and  immortality,  even  conscience  and  the  moral 
law,  —  what  are  these  things  ?  We  want  some 
sign,  some  proof  of  them  which  there  can 
be  no  possible  gainsaying."  And  when  they 
find  that  no  such  proof  can  be  given,  many 
would  put  these  things  aside,  as  altogther 
unreal. 

So  I  take  for  my  subject  — ''  Belief  in  things 
which  cannot  be  proved."  Perhaps  at  first  sight 
the  very  statement  of  the  subject  seems  to  dis- 
credit it.     The  bare  idea  seems  contrary  to  the 

35 


36  BELIEF   IN   THINGS   UNPROVEN 

scientific  spirit  of  the  age.  Men  have  become  so 
accustomed  to  the  precise  statements  and  verifi- 
cations of  science ;  to  having  everything  set  down 
in  black  and  white,  to  the  thousandth  of  an  inch 
or  a  fourth  decimal,  that  they  cannot  endure  to 
have  anything  left  vague  or  uncertain.  And 
yet  I  am  bold  enough  to  say  that  all  this  idea 
of  having  everything  ''  proved,"  logical  and 
plausible,  as  it  may  seem,  is  really  curiously  de- 
lusive ;  that  life  does  not  go  by  "  proofs  '* ;  that 
thought,  judgment,  feeling,  action,  are  seldom 
based  on  "  proofs."  And  so,  though  the  high- 
est things  in  life  may  not  prove  themselves, 
cannot  be  proved,  that  is  no  reason  for  doubting 
their  reality,  yes  and  that  they  may  be  the  very 
grandest  realities. 

Let  us  begin  at  "  the  small  end  "  of  this  sub- 
ject. It  is  curious  to  see,  how  this  questioning 
age,  which  would  insist  so  strongly  on  logical 
proof  in  the  great  things  of  the  inner  life,  really 
answers  itself  in  the  small  things  of  the  outer 
life.  Why,  the  world  could  not  go  on  for  a  day 
if  it  would  not  believe  anything,  nor  act  on  its 
belief,  till  it  could  be  proved.  The  real  conduct 
of  life  proceeds  on  impressions  accepted  directly 
from  the  senses,  or  on  habits  of  thought  re- 
ceived from  the  past,  or  on  convictions  gradually 
consolidated  by  experience.     Hardly  ever,  is  any 


BELIEF    IN    THINGS    UNPROVEN  37 

single  thing,  if  you  bring  it  rigidly  to  book, 
capable  of  absolute  proof.  It  is  only  an  impres- 
sion that  I  exist  —  though  a  strong  one.  My 
impression  that  you  exist,  as  thinking  personal 
beings,  is  even  less  capable  of  proof ;  it  is  a  mere 
inference  from  certain  sensations  on  my  optic 
nerve.  Yet  I  know  that  such  sensations  may  be 
entirely  delusive,  for  I  felt  them  just  as  unmis- 
takably about  the  people  I  saw  in  my  dreams 
last  night.  Does  man  wait  to  eat  and  drink  till 
it  shall  be  proved  to  him  that  food  is  necessary? 
By  all  means  demonstrate  to  me  the  principles 
of  digestion,  —  but  I  would  like  my  breakfast 
first,  the  demonstration  afterwards.  Will  you 
wait  to  go  down  to  the  city  on  business  till  you 
have  faced  and  settled  the  question  whether 
there  is  any  real,  external  world,  and  logically 
proved  that  even  the  omnibus  is  anything  but  a 
subjective  idea?  To  any  philosophical  idealist 
who  wanted  you  to  assure  yourself  on  this  mat- 
ter, you  would  say  —  "  we  had  better  get  into 
this  thing,  which  appears  like  a  real  omnibus, 
and  we  can  argue  whether  there  really  is  such  a 
thing  as  we  go  along."  I  am  not  jesting.  Every 
close  thinker  knows  that,  in  reality,  all  the  most 
fundamental  elements  of  our  living  have  to  be 
taken  for  granted,  are,  really,  only  more  or  less 
vivid  impressions,  absolutely  incapable  of  rigid 


38  BELIEF   IN   THINGS   UNPROVEN 

demonstration.  And  so  of  all  the  realm  of  feel- 
ing and  emotion: — 

"  I  do  not  love  thee,  Doctor  Fell 
The  reason,  why,  I  cannot  tell." 

Do  our  likes  and  dislikes  go  by  proving?  Nay, 
we  not  only  constantly  believe,  and  feel,  and 
act,  without  proof,  but  one  of  the  most  common 
things  in  life  is  an  actual  distrust  of  the  offer 
of  proof.  Those  columns  after  columns  in  the 
papers,  of  ''  proofs  "  of  some  infallible  remedy, 
—  well,  those  testimonials  of  cure  seem  over- 
whelming, but  you  are  incredulous  all  the  same. 
So,  if  some  public  official  is  always  challenging 
investigation,  you  get  an  impression  that  in  real- 
ity there  is  something  not  quite  right.  And  I 
think  we  carry  the  same  feeling  into  deeper 
things.  I  know  that  some  very  good  people  be- 
lieve in  spiritualism,  and  of  course  it  is  simply 
a  question  of  whether  or  not  it  is  true.  But  I 
own  I  should  be  inclined  to  think  more  of  the 
probabilty  of  its  being  true  if  it  were  not  so 
very  largely  occupied  in  proving  itself,  always 
asking  to  be  "  tested,"  and  obligingly  ready  to 
give  any  quantity  of  "  signs."  When  something 
comes  that  claims  to  be  a  communication  out 
of  the  Divine  heights  —  let  me  simply  hear  the 
word  —  if  it  is  from  the  Divine,  it  will  surely  bear 


BELIEF    IN   THINGS   UNPROVEN  39 

some  marks  of  it  in  itself.     A  great  truth  car- 
ries its  own  conviction  with  it. 

Now  you  see  the  significance  of  the  Jews 
coming  to  Christ,  and  asking  for  a  sign  —  not 
these  Httle  healing  words  for  poor  sick  folk  — 
there  is  an  emphasis  on  that  *'  sign  from 
Heaven  "  —  something  that  there  could  be  no 
doubt  about  —  and  you  see,  too,  why  Christ  so 
utterly  refused  anything  of  the  kind.  Let  it  be 
an  open  question,  what  that  strange  power  was 
that  Christ  had  over  the  sick  body  or  the  dis- 
ordered mind;  it  was  at  any  rate  something 
that  he  shrank  from  making  a  show  of,  or  using 
as  a  mere  weapon  against  unbelief.  *'  He  that 
hath  ears  to  hear,  let  him  hear !  "  That  was 
his  appeal.  He  stood  among  his  people  —  just 
one  of  themselves,  not  with  any  *'  sign,"  not 
even  in  any  prophet's  garb,  —  the  simple  Man 
of  Nazareth  —  but  with  a  gospel  which  made 
its  own  way,  and  at  length  laid  hold  of  the  heart 
of  the  world,  simply  because  it  did  come  to  men 
as  a  revealing  of  Divine  things,  and  made  Duty, 
and  God,  and  Heaven,  more  real  to  the  human 
soul  than  they  had  ever  been  before.  But  that 
gospel  had  to  make  its  way,  by  this  intense  im- 
pression it  made,  not  by  its  being  proved.  And 
it  has  always  been  so,  and  is  so  still.  One  is 
sometimes  challenged  to  "  prove "  Christianity. 


40  BELIEF   IN    THINGS   UNPROVEN 

They  might  as  well  challenge  one  to  prove 
Shakespeare's  plays  or  Mendelsohn's  music. 
These  things  are  not  matters  of  proof.  So  with 
Christianity.  Here  is  this  "  Gospel  according 
to  Luke  "  as  it  is  named,  with  these  parables 
of  ''  the  good  Samaritan "  and  ''  the  Prodigal 
Son."  Can  it  be  absolutely  proved,  that  Luke 
wrote  this  gospel,  and  that  Jesus  actually  spoke 
those  parables  just  so?  No!  It  cannot  be 
categorically  proved.  I  have  little  doubt  that  it 
was  so.  I  think  it  is  as  fairly  established  that 
those  are  Christ's  teaching,  as  any  ancient 
authorship  can  be  expected  to  be.  But  the  real 
power  of  those  parables  does  not  rest  on  their 
being  proved,  but  upon  the  impression  they 
make.  Light  is  light,  and  it  helps  you  to  see, 
even  if  you  cannot  quite  make  out  where  it 
comes  from.  And  these  great  parables  have 
somehow  made  our  relation  to  man  and  to  God 
a  little  clearer.  And  so  with  Christ's  life  and 
teachings  as  a  whole.  The  great  fact  is,  that 
these  have  stirred  and  helped  the  world  as  noth- 
ing else  has  ever  done.  Proofs  of  a  kind,  they 
have  given  in  plenty :  —  the  proofs  of  lives  made 
better,  of  noble  movements  for  human  good,  of 
human  society  helped,  though  slowly,  to  higher 
thoughts  and  ways.  Real  proofs  these,  in  the 
deepest  fact  of  things.     The  truth  about  num- 


BELIEF   IN   THINGS   UNPROVEN  4I 

bers,  must  be  proved  by  figures.  The  truth 
about  substances,  must  be  proved  by  weight  or 
measure  or  chemical  test.  The  truth  about  Hfe 
is  proved  by  Hving.  But  any  exact,  logical 
demonstration  ?  —  No !  None  such  was  forth- 
coming for  Christ's  own  time,  and  none  can  be 
made  out  now.  Yet  he  took  hold  upon  the 
heart  of  the  world,  and  he  keeps  it.  There  are 
more  people  in  the  world  to-day,  reverencing 
his  name,  studying  his  life,  trying  to  be  truer, 
kinder  men  and  women  for  his  sake,  then  ever 
before.  As  the  corruptions  of  the  dark  ages  are 
gradually  clearing  away,  and  the  simple  Gospel 
figure  stands  out  in  its  original  tenderness  and 
power,  Christ  remains  more  manifestly  than  ever 
the  grandest  leader  of  our  race,  the  divinest 
spiritual  influence  in  history. 

Thinking  of  all  this,  seeing  how  it  has  been 
with  Christ  and  his  great  words,  I  feel  my  trust 
strengthened,  not  in  these  alone,  but  in  all  the 
moral  and  religious  side  of  life,  not  just  in  their 
Christian  aspect,  but  as  integral  parts  of  the 
being  and  growth  of  man. 

Take  the  moral  life.  What  is  that  voice  of 
conscience?  What  is  it  —  that  which  speaks  in 
the  heart  of  the  grown  man  or  the  little  child, 
of  this  being  right,  and  that,  wrong?  Why 
should  you  attend  to  that  restraining  influence? 


42  BELIEF   IN   THINGS   UNPROVEN 

You  know,  if  you  shall  challenge  that  subtle 
feeling  for  a  logical  proof  of  itself,  it  can  never 
give  one.  You  may  easily  argue  conscience 
down,  not  so  as  to  silence  it,  indeed,  but  so  as 
to  persuade  yourself  that  it  is  nothing  but  a 
fancy,  that  the  distinction  between  right  and 
wrong  is  a  mere  scruple  of  man's  own  invent- 
ing. And  it  does  not  strive  nor  cry.  There  is 
no  compulsion  to  righteousness.  Often,  men 
wish  there  were.  Perhaps  this  is  one  of  the 
most  touching  forms  of  this  craving  for  "  signs  " 
and  certainty,  —  a  man  being  drawn  down  by 
sin,  and  struggling  against  it  —  but  feeling  so 
pitifully  weak.  ''  Oh,  that  God  would  rend  the 
heavens  and  come  down,"  and  by  some  palpable 
manifestation  overawe  the  tempted  heart  and 
make  it  impossible  to  sin.  But  no;  no  sign  is 
given,  and  when  the  sin  is  sinned,  still  no  sign. 
The  sun  shines  on;  birds  sing;  the  flowers  do 
not  turn  away  their  heads;  men  come  and  go; 
the  world  goes  on  unchanged.  Yet  is  the  dif- 
ference between  right  and  wrong,  therefore, 
nothing?  Why,  there  is  no  distinction  of  form 
or  colour,  sweetness  or  sourness,  or  anything  in 
the  outward  world,  to  compare  with  it  for  a 
moment.  It  is  quite  impalpable.  It  gives  no 
outward  sign.  No  closest  test  can  analyse  it. 
It  cannot  be  proved  to  be  anything,  —  and  yet 


BELIEF   IN   THINGS   UNPROVEN  43 

—  the  difference  between  right  and  wrong  is 
the  most  awful  and  tremendous  thing  in  all 
man's  being,  and  in  all  the  Universe. 

Or  —  take  Religion.  What  are  these  shadowy 
impulses  which  through  the  ages  point  man's 
heart  towards  God,  and  towards  the  sense  of 
some  further  life?  ''  Man,"  said  Dr.  Martineau, 
"  does  not  believe  in  immortality  because  it  has 
ever  been  proved;  but  he  is  for  ever  trying  to 
prove  it,  because  he  cannot  help  believing  it.'* 
So  with  belief  in  God.  Oh,  how  mankind  has 
longed  for  some  unmistakable  manifestation  of 
Deity.  It  is  no  craving  of  our  age  alone.  The 
old  world  idolatries  came  of  it.  It  was  so  hard 
to  realise  the  invisible.  Men  wanted  some  visible 
embodiment  of  this  Divine  presence  which 
seemed  to  haunt  them.  Here  and  there  some 
strong  souled  Moses  might  be  able  to  do  with- 
out anything  visible,  and  might  thunder  against 
all  graven  images,  but  the  common  people  still 
cried  to  the  weaker  Aaron,  "  make  us  Gods !  " 
To-day  the  craving  takes  a  different  form.  It 
does  not  ask  an  outward  presentation  of  God, 
so  much  as  a  logical  proof  of  Him.  It  wants 
that  mysterious  Life  demonstrating  to  science. 
It  wants  reason  to  prove  the  existence  of  God. 
Then,  some  say,  —  "  it  is  by  intuition  that  the 
soul   discerns   Him  " ;  —  and   how   many   strain 


44  BELIEF    IN    THINGS    UNPROVEN 

that  gaze  of  their  souls,  that  intense  scrutiny 
of  the  thoughts  and  impressions  that  come  to 
them  in  the  awe  of  Night  or  in  the  stillness  of 
prayer  —  trying  to  make  out  something  which 
they  can  distinctly  recognise  as  God.  And  here, 
too,  they  get  discouraged  —  often  it  seems  as 
if  the  more  eagerly  they  strain  their  mental 
gaze,  the  more  they  cannot  see  that  Higher  pres- 
ence. I  believe  that  this  is  one  of  the  commonest 
phases  of  that  doubt  which  is  so  frequent  to- 
day, and  which  is  so  anxious  for  some  scientific 
proof.  Some  of  you  may  remember  how  Pro- 
fessor Tyndall  proposed  to  organise  a  prayer- 
test  —  two  Hospitals  to  be  set  apart,  and  the 
patients  treated  with  equal  skill,  only  the  one  set 
to  be  prayed  for,  and  the  other  not,  and  the  re- 
sult to  decide  whether  prayer  amounts  to  any- 
thing. When  that  was  proposed,  religious  men 
at  once  universally  refused  to  submit  Prayer  to 
any  such  material  test,  —  and  I  remember  that 
their  refusal  was  sneered  at  by  some  as  showing 
that  they  had  no  real  faith  in  God.  But  that 
laughter  w^as  shallow.  These  deep  things  of 
man's  inner  life,  are,  simply,  not  subjects  for 
such  outward  tests,  however  much  they  may 
really  affect  the  outward  life.  I  believe  for  in- 
stance that  righteousness  affects  the  outward 
life ;  that  honesty  is  '*  the  best  policy  "  even  for 


BELIEF    IN    THINGS    UNPROVEN  45 

mere  wordly  success.  Yet  suppose  some  one, 
who  has  set  up  the  theory  that  there  is  no  real 
difference  between  right  and  wrong,  to  chal- 
lenge me  to  stake  my  moral  faith  upon  the  com- 
parative fortunes  of  twenty  honest  men,  and 
twenty  clever  rogues,  —  shall  I  agree  to  do  so  ? 
Not  for  a  moment !  Not  by  such  outward  proofs 
and  signs  can  these  deep  things  of  the  conscience 
and  the  inner  life  be  demonstrated.  Take  this 
very  life  itself  in  us,  apart  from  this  or  that  spe- 
cial quality  or  phase  of  it.  As  I  look  into  your 
face,  just  with  my  ordinary  eyesight  as  we  stand 
talking  together,  I  perceive  in  you  a  life,  of 
thought,  intelligence,  feeling  —  answering  to 
this  life  I  am  conscious  of  in  myself.  But  sup- 
pose for  some  reason,  I  begin  to  distrust  my 
eyesight.  I  say  —  "  Let  us  look  into  this  ap- 
pearance of  life  more  closely;  let  us  see  exactly 
what  it  is."  And  I  bring  my  microscope,  and 
apply  it  to  your  face.  Shall  I  see  the  life  in  you 
more  clearly?  The  very  opposite.  The  more 
powerful  my  microscope,  the  more  it  will  mag- 
nify the  mere  fleshly  tissue,  but  the  more  ab- 
solutely I  shall  lose  the  expression  of  personal 
life.  So,  in  scores  of  ways,  the  very  effort  after 
exact  proof,  really  makes  the  deepest  things  less 
evident,  not  more  so,  —  even  when  they  are  un- 
mistakably real.      Sometimes   a  larger,   general 


46  BELIEF   IN    THINGS    UNPROVEN 

view  shows  things  of  which  the  close  scrutiny 
shows  nothing.  Can  you  see  that  the  atmosphere 
has  any  colour  as  you  look  at  the  few  yards  of 
air  before  you?  No!  But  look  up  through  the 
fifty  miles  of  air  into  the  solemn  depths  of  the 
sky,  and  you  see  that  beautiful  blue  as  plainly 
as  if  it  was  painted  on  the  next  wall.  So  as 
you  look  at  the  religious  sense  in  your  own  in- 
dividual thought  and  feeling,  all  may  seem  un- 
substantial, nothing  clear  enough  to  take  as  any 
real  discerning  of  God.  But  don't  look  at  your 
own  thought  and  feeling;  look  at  the  thought 
and  feeling  of  humanity;  look  along  the  cen- 
turies; see  how  religion  has  come  out  in  the 
larger  life  of  mankind!  See  how,  in  such  dif- 
ferent forms,  it  has  yet  in  some  form  risen  in 
every  race,  and  intertwined  itself  (like  the  basal 
instincts  of  hunger,  love,  or  gain)  through  all 
of  human  doings.  See  what  a  tremendous  force 
it  has  been,  even  when  wrested  to  the  side  of 
evil;  but  how  much  more  it  has  inspired  man's 
noblest  works,  lifted  man  to  the  loftiest  heroism. 
Talk  of  giving  it  up  because  it  cannot  be  logic- 
ally proved  to  us  to-day?  Why,  nothing  can  be 
absolutely  proved,  —  and  yet  things  are ;  and 
greatest  of  all  the  things  that  are  are^  the  in- 
visible things;  and  greatest  of  the  invisible 
things  are  these  of  conscience  and  soul  and  God. 


BELIEF    IN    THINGS    UNPROVEN  4/ 

They  are  only  in  the  same  category,  really,  with 
everything  else.  As  the  life  of  man  rises  in  the 
scale,  it  rises  more  and  more  above  the  mere 
outward,  into  a  higher  range  of  thought,  percep- 
tion, motive.  This  is  so  not  in  science  only ;  — 
art,  music,  the  great  thoughts  of  thinkers,  the 
lofty  ideals  of  goodness,  the  uplifting  aspirations 
of  worship  —  all  of  these  are  things  which  hide 
their  secret  from  all  outward  sense,  and  yet  they 
are  life's  noblest  elements,  life  without  them  is 
a  bare,  poor,  hopeless  thing ! 

The  practical  help  of  all  this,  is  here :  —  to 
teach  us  to  look  out  a  little  more  humbly  and 
reverently  in  this  wondrous  universe  and  won- 
drous life  in  which  we  find  ourselves.  We  want 
a  little  less  of  that  common  assumption  of  knowl- 
edge, or  of  expecting  to  know,  and  that  we  have 
only  to  concern  ourselves  with  what  we  know; 
and  at  the  same  time,  we  do  not  want  to  fall 
into  the  other  extreme  of  a  hopeless  agnosti- 
cism, but  to  keep  on  our  way  in  confident  and 
happy  faith.  What?  Be  discouraged  because 
we  cannot  know  or  prove  life's  highest  things? 
Why,  what  we  know  or  even  think  we  know,  is 
only  the  very  smallest,  most  superficial  part  of 
everything.  Your  most  defined  knowledge 
opens  out,  right  upon  an  unsearchable  infinity. 
You  can  measure  a  foot,  a  mile,  —  but  what  is 


48  BELIEF   IN   THINGS   UNPROVEN 

this  thing  space?  You  can  measure  an  hour,  a 
year,  —  but  what  is  time  —  still  more,  what  is 
eternity?  What  then?  Would  you  stop  at  the 
measurements  or  time-beats  that  you  think  you 
know,  and  lose  the  uplifting  wonder  of  that 
larger  infinity  to  which  they  directly  lead?  For 
so  do  all  things  lead  us.  The  "  flower  in  the 
crannied  wall "  leads  you  right  to  the  whole 
mystery  of  the  universe.  A  little  child's  face, 
the  more  you  look  into  it,  shadows  forth  pos- 
sibilities that  reach  to  Heaven.  A  parent's  love, 
as  you  ponder  its  deepest  meaning,  opens  to  you 
the  sense  of  some  source  of  love  in  this  great 
universe,  in  which  there  is  no  stopping  place 
short  of  faith  in  God.  All  things  are  hints  to 
us,  —  not  proofs,  but  hints,  leadings,  towards 
greater  things  of  v/hich  we  catch  glimpses,  and 
which  as  the  ages  pass  make  themselves  felt. 
And  these  greater  things,  like  the  great  Christ, 
while  giving  no  signs  or  proofs,  invite  our  hearts 
to  believe  in  them  and  follow  them.  Man's 
wisdom  is,  while  holding  fast  the  clue  of  what 
he  sees  and  knows  —  hold  that  fast,  there  is 
the  safeguard  against  folly  and  superstition  — 
but,  holding  fast  that  clue  of  what  he  sees  and 
knows  let  him  go  on  with  glad,  upward-looking 
faith  into  the  realm  beyond.  Let  life  lie  open 
to  the  greater  things,  and  be  growing  towards 


BELIEF  IN  THINGS  UNPROVEN  49 

them;  keep  a  welcoming  eye  for  the  world's 
tender,  solemn  beauty;  obey  the  promptings  of 
the  best  and  kindest  thoughts  that  lead  you  on 
to  things  you  have  not  done,  perhaps  are  afraid 
to  do;  keep  touch  with  the  great  adoring  habit 
of  the  world;  dare  to  lift  up  your  song  and 
prayer  with  the  earth's  manifold  worship,  albeit 
when  you  try  to  make  out  some  clear  outline  of 
that  you  worship,  your  thought  falls  back  dazed 
and  blinded.  And  then,  although  these  greater 
realities  may  never  prove  themselves  in  figures 
or  in  syllogisms,  they  shall  gradually  prove 
themselves  in  life.  Still  to  the  end,  we  may  not 
see,  but  we  shall  be  more  and  more  sure  that  we 
are  in  the  way  towards  seeing,  —  tending  not 
towards  nothingness  and  darkness,  but  towards 
the  absolute  reality  and  towards  the  perfect  light. 


THE  MYSTERY  OF  MIND 

Paul  here  touches  one  of  the  deep  perplex- 
ities of  life.  I  have  called  it  the  perplexity  of 
mind.  In  the  deepest  aspect  of  it,  I  might  as 
well  couple  the  perplexity  of  matter  with  that 
of  mind,  for  really  matter,  what  matter  is,  is 
just  as  obscure,  just  as  much  a  mystery  as  what 
mind  is.  But  we  do  not  feel  it  so.  To  the  or- 
dinary apprehension,  at  least,  there  does  not 
seem  any  particular  perplexity  about  outward 
material  things.  A  tree,  a  rock,  a  horse,  no  mis- 
take about  these;  no  doubt  as  to  their  being 
facts  and  realities.  But  if  I  speak  of  mind,  or 
of  conscience  or  soul  or  any  of  what  we  com- 
monly call  mental  or  spiritual  realities,  there 
are  many  who  at  once  find  doubts  and  question- 
ings suggested.  How  do  we  know  that  there  is 
any  such  thing  as  soul  or  mind?  If  there  is, 
why  is  it  not  just  as  palpable  to  us  as  the  body 
is?  That  is  the  perplexity.  Because,  this  subt- 
ler side  of  life  and  being  haunts  man.  We  can- 
not live  together  a  day  or  an  hour  without  talk- 
ing of  mind  or  conscience  or  some  other  element 
of  that  invisible  side  of  our  nature.     We  talk  of 

51 


52  THE   MYSTERY  OF   MIND 

"  making  up  our  mind "  or  "  changing  our 
mind  "  or  "  obeying  conscience  "  or  "  keeping  a 
pure  soul."  And  it  seems  as  if,  supposing  these 
are  reaHties,  there  ought  to  be  no  more  doubt 
about  them,  we  ought  to  be  able  to  lay  our  hands 
upon  them,  and  say,  "  See,  here  it  is,  just  thus 
and  so."  But  you  know  it  is  just  the  opposite. 
If  it  were  not,  I  should  not  have  to  be  working 
out  an  argument  of  this  kind.  I  do  not  have 
to  argue  to  help  people  to  realise  that  trees  and 
rocks  and  bodies  are  real.  But  we  do  constantly 
need  to  reassure  ourselves  that  mind  and  soul 
and  conscience  are  real,  yes  and  indeed  the  most 
tremendous  realities  of  all. 

Now  let  us  look  at  the  two  sides  of  this  per- 
plexity a  little  more  fully.  On  the  one  hand  is 
the  material  universe  —  a  glorious  thing  to  con- 
template, even  to  any  one  who  merely  looks  at 
it  from  the  outside  as  it  were,  with  what  Paul 
calls  "  the  natural  eye."  To  the  trained  eye 
and  to  the  assisted  eye,  it  grows  more  and  more 
wonderful.  Year  by  year  the  microscope  in  one 
direction  and  the  telescope  in  the  other  are  open- 
ing the  Universe  to  our  gaze  in  ever  more  won- 
derful gloriousness  and  extent.  Chemistry 
seems  the  great  science  to-day,  penetrating  to 
the  very  innermost  secrets  of  all  this  physical 
being.     But  the  point  is,  the  orderly  observable- 


THE   MYSTERY   OF   MIND  53 

ness  of  it  all.  Not  an  object,  not  a  force,  not  a 
fact,  not  the  tiniest  spot  of  space,  but  science 
claims  it  for  its  own,  and  never  leaves  it  till  it 
has  reduced  it  to  its  own  terms,  in  the  catalogue 
of  material  things,  and  classed  it  upon  the 
shelves  of  system  and  law.  And  even  far  beyond 
any  direct  observation,  it  makes  the  finer  forces, 
it  discovers  work  for  it,  and  keeps  tracking 
things  out  and  making  them  visible  to  thought 
if  not  to  sight.  The  photographic  plate  indicates 
stars  that  are  far  beyond  the  power  of  any  teles- 
sope  to  shew  us.  The  Rontgen  rays,  the  finer 
workings  of  electricity,  are  quite  invisible;  but 
by  curious  cross-tracks  of  subtle  analysis  they 
are  being  brought  within  the  range  of  knowl- 
edge. And  as  with  the  material  universe  so 
with  these  bodies  of  ours;  the  body  has  been 
looked  through  and  through.  Every  atom  takes 
its  place  in  the  material  order.  The  brain  has 
been  weighed  and  analysed,  and  its  various 
nervous  tissues  tracked  to  their  local  uses;  and 
science  has  got  behind  the  delicate  mechanism 
of  the  eye;  and  watches  the  formation  of  the 
tiny  cells  by  which  new  matter  replaces  life's 
decay  and  waste;  and  the  very  blood  has  been 
analysed  and  watched  to  find  what  its  red  or 
white  corpuscles  have  to  do  in  the  harming  or 
helping  of  life. 


54  THE   MYSTERY   OF    MIND 

There  is  the  physical  Universe,  and  man's 
body  in  its  place  in  it.  Yet,  are  these  all?  Not 
at  all!  Somehow,  the  very  capacity  of  all  this 
to  be  observed  and  every  use  noted;  the  very 
orderly  completeness  of  this  whole  outward  Uni- 
verse only  brings  out  in  stronger  relief  the  fact 
of  their  being  quite  a  whole  range  of  being 
which  at  the  same  time  is  existing  or  going  on: 
—  the  whole  range  of  human  living  and  think- 
ing—  of  what  we  call  intellectual,  moral  and 
spiritual  living  and  acting!  Leave  out  the  ques- 
tion of  whether  we  may  speak  of  mind  and  soul. 
But  we  cannot  help  speaking  of  thinking  and 
feeling.  And  thought,  say,  lies  just  as  utterly 
outside  the  scope  of  the  material  world  as  the 
'*  mind  "  or  "  spirit "  we  are  enquiring  about. 
Just  look  for  a  moment  at  this  intangible  range 
of  facts  and  see  what  an  immense  part  it  plays 
in  life.  Think  of  love  and  hatred,  two  of  the 
most  tremendous  powers  by  which  the  human 
world  is  moved.  Think  of  the  sense  of  shame, 
the  dreadful  consciousness  of  guilt ;  —  and  on 
the  other  hand  the  joy  of  being  able  to  do  a 
kind,  helpful  action.  Think  of  that  feeling  of 
exerting  one's  will.  And  all  these  are  only  in- 
cidental developments  of  a  still  more  wonderful 
consciousness  —  that  of  personal  existence,  that 
which  is  able  to  say  "I  —  myself."     Now  here 


THE   MYSTERY   OF    MIND  55 

is  the  greater  part  of  life!  What  of  it?  Are 
we  to  ignore  it  —  nay,  we  cannot  do  that  if  we 
would  —  but  are  we  to  doubt  about  it  and  dis- 
credit it,  because  our  science,  which  in  the  great 
outward  Universe  seems  so  minute  and  exhaust- 
ive, can  simply  tell  us  nothing  about  it?  It  is 
curious  how  absolutely  it  does  lie  outside  the 
cognizance  of  our  science.  I  cut  or  burn  my 
finger  —  there  is  the  physical  fact  plain  on  the 
surface  of  things;  science  can  tell  me  all  about 
it.  Suppose  I  violate  my  conscience,  do  some- 
thing that  I  feel  to  be  sinful  —  why,  there  is 
no  physical  change  whatever,  and  yet  some- 
where, somehow,  we  feel  that  the  sense  of 
wrong-doing  is  one  of  the  most  tremendous  facts 
of  our  being,  —  one,  in  the  presence  of  which 
mere  cuts  or  burns  sink  into  insignificance.  I 
move  my  arm :  —  that  too  is  a  demonstrable 
fact,  science  can  watch  it,  measure  it,  tell  all 
about  it.  I  make  what  I  call  a  movement  of 
thought  —  I  calculate  a  sum,  or  I  think  out 
those  words  I  am  now  saying  to  you.  Does  any 
one  doubt  that  this  last  kind  of  movement  is  a 
far  greater  fact  in  my  being  than  any  mere  mus- 
cular movement?  Here,  you  see,  is  a  whole  side 
of  our  living  —  thought,  anger,  love,  conscien- 
tiousness, will  —  just  as  much  facts  as  seeing, 
hearing,    digestion,    or    the    circulation    of    the 


56  THE   MYSTERY  OF   MIND 

blood  —  and  our  science  is  simply  helpless 
among  them,  cannot  even  discern  or  distinguish 
them,  any  more  than  the  ear  can  distinguish 
colours;  and  are  we  then  to  treat  this  range  of 
imperceptible  feelings,  including  all  that  is  com- 
monly classed  under  conscience  and  soul,  as 
something  vague  and  doubtful,  or  as  lying  so  far 
in  among  the  microscopic  recesses  of  being, 
that  the  reliable  nature  of  them  has  not  yet  been 
discovered.  But  they  do  not  lie  far  in  or  deep 
down.  If  you  see  a  man  strike  a  little  child, 
your  moral  sense  of  horror  is  just  as  quick,  just 
as  palpable  as  your  sight  of  the  mere  muscular 
movement.  Will  you  trust  the  eye,  because  it 
is  an  evident  thing,  and  man  has  found  out  its 
nature  and  how  it  works;  and  then  will  you  dis- 
trust the  moral  sense,  because  science  cannot 
tell  you  what  it  is  or  anything  about  it?  And 
even  where  the  material  sight  gives  you  the 
strongest  impression  of  this  unknown  element 
of  mind  and  personal  character  being  somehow 
closely  connected  with  the  body,  it  does  not  do 
so  in  a  way  which  suggests  some  infinitesimally 
finer  element  in  the  recesses  of  our  being,  which 
scientific  investigation  has  not  yet  got  to  —  the 
impression  lies  on  the  very  surface.  I  see  the 
indication  of  it  in  a  man's  face.  What  is  it?  It 
is  not  colour,  it  is  not  form.     Science  can  note 


THE    MYSTERY   OF    MIND  57 

these  for  me;  but  it  cannot  touch  that  matter  of 
the  expression  which  evidences  the  Hfe.  And  if 
it  cannot  touch  it  at  the  surface,  it  certainly  can- 
not by  going  deeper  in  or  making  its  examina- 
tion minuter.  If  the  general  perception  of  the 
eye  is  too  vague  for  me  to  dare  to  infer  mind 
from  my  friend's  face,  certainly  it  will  not  be- 
come more  perceptible  through  a  microscope! 
On  the  contrary,  if  you  examine  the  face  with 
a  microscope  to  try  to  get  closer  into  the  indica- 
tion of  the  mind,  the  more  powerful  the  lense, 
only  the  more  utterly  will  it  lose  all  trace  of 
mind  and  come  back  to  mere  common  matter, 
only  magnified.  What  does  all  this  lead  to? 
That  if  only  we  keep  on  making  our  tests  more 
minute  we  shall  at  last  capture  these  curious  ele- 
ments of  thought  and  consciousness?  No!  I 
think  science  is  rather  coming  to  the  conclusion 
that  it  is  not  getting  nearer  to  the  mystery  of 
mind  that  way.  It  rather  seems  as  if  we  have 
to  frankly  recognise  that  there  is  some  other 
different  element  in  the  make  up  of  a  man  — 
different  from  anything  we  know  as  bodily  or 
material  —  something  which,  even  if  (as  the 
Monist  philosophy  maintains)  it  is  ultimately 
of  the  same  nature  as  matter,  is  in  so  infinitely 
finer  a  form,  that  it  cannot  be  judged  by  any 
limitations  of  what  we  know  as  matter.     Even  if 


58  THE   MYSTERY  OF   MIND 

we  had  to  conclude  that  what  we  call  the  higher 
life  in  man,  cannot  be  known  at  all,  directly, 
still  it  is  the  higher  life;  and  if  we  only  know  it 
by  its  results,  still  these  are  of  a  kind  which  lift 
it  clear  above  that  lower  bodily  life  of  which  we 
seem  to  have  some  knowledge.  So,  no  possible 
inference  as  to  the  source  of  things  could  make 
friendship  a  dream,  or  conscience  a  delusion,  or 
lessen  the  force  of  that  conviction  which  has 
grown  up  among  these  higher  elements  that 
somehow  they  live  on  even  when  the  lower  ele- 
ments dissolve. 

But  I  want  to  give  you  something  better  than 
my  own  thoughts.  Years  ago,  when  I  was  feel- 
ing this  mystery  of  mind  an  actual  perplexity, 
something  that  a  little  weakened  my  hold  on 
moral  and  spiritual  things,  and  when  I  was  glad 
of  any  light,  one  of  the  things  that  really  helped 
me  was  a  little  poem  of  Francis  Turner  Pal- 
grave's.  I  came  upon  it  again  quite  lately,  and 
read  it  again  with  some  interest  to  see  if  it  would 
seem  still  to  have  the  same  helpful  force  of 
thought  in  it.  And  it  seemed  still  so  strong  that 
I  thought  I  would  like  to  quote  some  parts  of 
it.  It  is  called  the  "  Reign  of  Law  "  and  its 
key-note  is  whence  and  whither.  And  it  is  a 
plea,  in  the  fuller  light  of  Law  itself,  for  faith 
in    the    soul    and    its    immortality.     The    poem 


THE   MYSTERY   OF   MIND  59 

imagines  some  mourners  by  the  dead  Christ ;  lov- 
ing watchers  and  mourners  by  that  noblest  of 
the  dead,  but  possessed  by  that  overwhelming 
sense  of  Law,  and  unable  to  believe  in  anything 
even  in  their  Christ,  except  matter,  perishing 
matter : 

"  We  ne'er  have  seen  the  law 

Reversed,  'neath  which  we  lie; 
Exceptions  none  are  found, 
And  when  we  die,  we  die !  " 

—  And  I  take  up  the  poem  just  as  it  breaks 
in  upon  them  with  this  apostrophe: 

"  Then,  wherefore  are  ye  come  ? 
Why  watch  a  worn  out  corse? 
Why  weep  a  ripple,  past 

Down  the  long  stream  of  force? 

The  forces  that  were  Christ, 

Have  ta'en  new  forms,  and  fled 
The  common  sun  goes  up, 

The  dead  are  with  the  dead. 

'Twas  but  a  phantom  life, 

That  seemed  to  think  and  will 
Evolving  Self  and  God 

By  some  suggestive  skill 
That  had  its  day  of  passage  hither, 
But  knew  no  whence,  and  knows  no  whither. 


6o  THE   MYSTERY   OF   MIND 

If  this  be  all  in  all, 

Life  but  one   mode  of   force, 
Law  but  the  plan  which  binds 

The  sequences  in  course: 
All  essence,  all  design, 

Shut  out  from  mortal  ken. 
We  bow  to  Nature's  fate. 

And  drop  the  style  of  men; 
The   summer   dust   the   wind   wafts   hither 
Is  not  more  dead  to  whence  and  whither. 

But  if  our  life  be  life, 

And  thought  and  will  and  love, 
Not  vague  unconscious  airs 

That   o'er  wild   harp   strings   move; 
If   consciousness   be   aught 

Of  all  it  seems  to  be 
And  souls  are  something  more 

Than  lights  that  gleam  and  flee — 
Though  dark  the  road  that  leads  us  hither. 
The  heart  must  ask  its  whence  and  whither. 

To  matter  or  to   force, 

The  all  is  not  confined. 
Beside  the  law  of  things 

Is  set  the  law  of  mind. 
One  speaks  in  rock  and  star 

And  one  within  the  brain 
In  unison  at  times. 

And  then  apart  again. 

The  sequences  of  Law, 

We  learn  through  mind  alone. 


THE   MYSTERY   OF    MIND  6l 

'Tis  only  through  the  soul 

That  aught  we  know,  is  known. 
With  equal  voice  she  tells 

Of  what  we  touch  and  see 
Within  these  bounds  of  life, 

And  of  a  life  to  be. 
Proclaiming  One  who  brought  us  hither 
And  holds  the  keys  of  whence  and  whither. 

And  then  he  breaks  into  such  an  exultation  in 
this  sense  of  the  reality  of  soul  in  man !  — 

"  Oh,  shrine  of  God,  that  now 

Must  learn  itself  with  awe ! 
O,  heart  and  soul  that  move 

Beneath  a  living  law ! 
That  which  seemed  all  the  rule, 

Of  Nature,  is  but  part; 
A  larger,  deeper  law. 

Claims  also  soul  and  heart. 

We  may  not  hope  to  read 

Or  understand  the  whole, 
Or  of  the  law  of  things, 

Or  of  the  law  of  soul. 
E'en  in  the  eternal  stars 

Dim  perturbations  rise, 
And  all  the  searcher's  search 

Does  not  exhaust  the  skies; 
He  w^ho  has  framed  and  brought  us  hither 
Holds  in  his  hands  the  whence  and  whither. 

He  in  his  science  plans. 

What  no  known  laws  foretell; 


62  THE   MYSTERY   OF   MIND 

The  wandering  fires  and  fixed, 

Alike  are  miracle ! 
The  common  death  of  all, 

The  life  renewed  above, 
Are  both  within  the  scheme 

Of  that  all-circling  love ! 
The  seeming  chance  that  cast  us  hither, 
Accomplishes  His  Whence  and  Whither ! 

Of  course  it  may  be  said  that  this  is  still  only 
affirmation,  and  that  affirmation  does  not  be- 
come proof  merely  by  being  clothed  in  poetry. 
No !  but  then  it  is  not  a  question  of  proof  —  for, 
as  Tennyson  says  — 

"  Nothing  worthy  proving  can  be  proved, 
Nor  yet  disproven " 

All  that  higher  side  of  life  which  we  indicate  — 
not  define  —  by  the  words  "  mental "  or 
**  spiritual  "  depends  really  upon  its  own  affirma- 
tion within  us;  and  whatever  brings  out  the 
sense  of  it  more  vividly  helps  us  to  feel  a  quiet 
certainty  that  though  we  cannot  tell  just  what 
or  how  it  is,  it  is  the  noblest  and  the  most  reliable 
element  in  us. 

And  so  from  these  perplexities  about  mind  and 
soul,  which  the  exactness  and  certainty  of 
physical  science  has  started  up  with  new  force 
in  our  day,  we  have  simply  to  fall  back  upon 


THE    MYSTERY   OF    MIND  63 

our  inner  consciousness,  backed  as  it  is  by  the 
common  consciousness  of  man,  and  the  clear 
sense  of  the  wisest  and  the  hoHest.  Occasionally 
this  higher  consciousness  seems  confused  or  ob- 
scured, as  many  subtle  thinkers  have  found  it 
in  our  time;  but  the  quiet  heart  of  man  and  the 
silent  teaching  of  experience  keeps  leading  back 
to  the  recognition  of  mind,  conscience,  soul,  as, 
however  mysterious,  still  the  greatest  realities  of 
Being. 

And  when  we  come  to  this  (to  live  in  it  and 
rest  in  it.  Mind,  Conscience,  Soul,  life's  greatest 
realities)  it  leads  us  further  still,  still  not  in  out- 
lined knowledge,  but  in  very  strong  and  happy 
faith  —  faith  reaching  outside  our  life,  above, 
beyond  —  that  this  conscious  life  in  us  is  not 
the  only  conscious  life  in  a  vast  machinery  of 
substances  and  forces!  It  is  life  in  an  answer- 
ing Universe  of  life.  Soul  in  an  answering  uni- 
verse of  Spirit,  Conscience  in  an  answering  Uni- 
verse of  Righteous  Will ;  and  human  friendliness 
and  love  in  an  answering  Universe  that  has  a 
kindred,  mighty  Loving-Kindness  in  its  inmost 
and  divinest  heart  and  meaning. 


THE    VERIFICATION    OF    MIND 

I  HAVE  been  considering  the  mystery  of  mind. 
Why  are  not  conscience  and  soul,  and  all  that  we 
are  conscious  of  in  that  vague  region  which  we 
call  mind,  why  are  not  these  as  palpable  as  the 
body?  And  I  urged  strongly  that  even  if  all 
that,  which  we  speak  of  as  the  "  higher  life  "  in 
man,  cannot  be  known  directly,  still  it  evidently 
is  the  higher  life,  and  we  may  trust  it,  backed, 
as  it  is  by  the  common  consciousness  of  man 
and  the  clear  sense  of  the  wisest  and  holiest. 

But  I  think  that  we  may  go  a  little  further, 
and  it  is  that  further  step  that  I  would  now  trace. 

Even  if  we  could  be  no  surer  of  any  of  these 
invisible  things  —  than  simply  to  say,  '  well,  we 
feel  so  and  so ' ;  even  if  we  were  left  to  this  gen- 
eral thought  and  feeling  of  them  as  things  in 
our  minds  —  even  so  we  should  not  be  badly  off. 
Because,  we  feel  them  quite  unmistakably,  even 
though  we  cannot  tell  how.  My  feelings  on 
hearing  of  a  brutal  murder  are  just  as  clear  and 
unmistakable  as  my  outward  sensation  of  this 
desk,  or  of  this  light.     But  that  mere  feeling, 

65 


^  THE  VERIFICATION  OF  MIND 

Strong,  intense  as  it  is,  is  not  all.  When  we 
look  into  it,  we  find  that  the  intimations  of  our 
inner  consciousness  are  just  as  capable  of  being 
verified  as  those  of  the  outward  senses.  Nay, 
more,  —  the  very  methods  of  verification  are 
curiously  alike. 

Let  us  range  clearly,  side  by  side,  these  two 
distinct  classes  of  impressions  which  make  them- 
selves felt  in  our  nature  —  on  the  one  hand 
those  coming  from  the  outside,  in  such  sensations 
as  sight,  touch,  sound,  reporting  to  us  the  na- 
ture and  relations  of  material  objects;  on  the 
other  hand,  the  impressions  rising  up  within  us, 
as  it  were,  and  making  us  aware  of  invisible 
qualities  and  existences.  As  a  fact  men  have 
taken  both  sets  of  impressions  as  trustworthy. 
Trusting  the  outward  sensations,  they  have  built 
up  their  science  of  the  laws  and  relations  of  out- 
ward things.  Taking  the  inner  consciousness 
as  trustworthy,  they  have  built  up  its  perceptions 
of  mind,  and  soul,  into  mental  science,  Morals, 
Law,  Religion.  The  question  is,  of  course,  how 
we  can  be  sure  that  either  set  of  impressions 
corresponds  to  anything  that  really  is?  Even 
the  vividneess  of  the  outward  sensation  as  your 
eye  sees  a  thing  and  your  hand  touches  it,  is  no 
sure  proof.  We  know  that  some  such  sensa- 
tions are  delusions.     When  you  are  dreaming, 


THE   VERIFICATION   OF   MIND  (i^ 

you  have  for  the  time  just  as  vivid  an  impression 
of  the  things  and  people  in  that  dream-state,  as, 
nov^  in  your  waking  hours,  you  have  of  the  per- 
son sitting  next  to  you.  Yet  you  know  that 
those  dream  impressions  have  no  reality.  How? 
How  do  you  verify  that  some  are  realities,  while 
others  are  only  dreams? 

Well,  there  are  several  well-understood  quali- 
ties which  we  find  in  the  impressions  of  our 
waking-hours,  but  not  in  our  dreams,  and  which 
verify  for  us  some  permanent  reality  in  those 
things  of  our  waking-hours.  And  what  I  am 
struck  with,  is,  that,  really,  there  are  the  same 
verifications  in  mental  and  moral  and  spiritual 
things,  to  make  us  sure  that  these,  too,  are  not 
mere  fancies,  but  subtle  realities,  —  parts, 
though  all  invisible  of  the  ordered  reality  of 
things.  One  of  these  tests  of  the  external  real- 
ities, is,  that  they  are  seen  and  felt  by  others, 
very  much  as  by  ourselves.  This  at  once  cuts 
them  off  from  mere  dreams  or  fancies.  You  and 
I  might  be  asleep  and  dreaming  in  the  same 
room,  but  the  things  and  people  we  should  see 
in  our  dreams  would  be  perfectly  different. 
The  moment  we  wake,  we  see  the  same  things. 
Is  there  a  book  before  us,  it  is  a  book  to  both. 
A  lamp?  Each  sees  it  as  a  lamp.  But  now 
see!     The    reality    of    that    invisible    world    of 


68  THE   VERIFICATION   OF    MIND 

thought  and  mind,  is  confirmed  in  the  same  way. 
Men  are  just  as  universally  conscious  of  the 
things  of  thought  and  mind,  as  they  are  of  out- 
w^ard  visible  things,  go  w^here  you  will  among 
men,  you  find  the  same  feelings  of  love  and 
hate,  of  right  and  wrong,  of  will,  of  personality; 
and  of  these  things  in  each  other  as  well  as  in 
oneself.  As  these  things  are  perceived  within, 
it  may  not  be  so  easy  to  compare  exact  notes 
about  them.  You  cannot  place  a  thought  or  a 
feeling  on  the  table  before  you  like  a  botanical 
specimen.  But  we  can  compare  notes  quite  suf- 
ficiently to  be  sure  there  is  no  mistake.  The 
quality  of  deceitfulness  is  the  same  thing  to  one 
man's  inner  perception  that  it  is  to  another's. 
If  a  dozen  of  us  see  a  man  striking  a  little  child, 
we  see  the  invisible  quality  of  the  act,  just  as 
clearly  and  as  much  alike,  as  we  see  the  outward 
movement.  And  so  even  of  religious  realities. 
Just  as,  mankind  through,  you  find  this  moral 
sense,  of  distinction  between  right  and  wrong, 
so  you  find  a  religious  sense  of  some  mighty  life 
in  or  through  nature,  with  which  man's  being  is 
somehow  connected ;  and  all  this  tells  us  that  this 
common  consciousness  of  inner  invisible  things, 
is  just  as  trustworthy  as  the  sensations  of  an 
outward  visible  world. 

I  may  carry  the  parallel  to  a  second  step,  to 


THE   VERIFICATION    OF    MIND  69 

a  further  method  of  verification.  There  is  some- 
thing about  these  physical  sensations  which  seem 
to  tell  us  of  an  outward  world,  more  striking 
than  their  being  felt  by  all  people  alike,  —  and 
that  is  that  they  fit  together,  can  be  compared 
and  made  subjects  of  calculation  and  experiment. 
That  is  what  makes  science  possible.  You  could 
not  have  a  science  of  the  objects  which  you  see 
in  your  dream,  however  vivid  and  real  they  may 
seem  at  the  moment.  Edmund  Halley,  in  1682 
saw  what,  to  him,  w^as  a  new  star  —  a  comet.  It 
did  not  seem  more  real  at  the  time,  than  a  star 
I  saw  in  a  dream  some  nights  ago.  But  see :  he 
watches  his  star's  course,  calculated  that  it  ought 
to  return  in  76  years,  that  would  be  in  1758; 
and  others,  later,  revising  his  calculations  made 
out  that  it  ought  to  return  about  April,  1759,  — 
and  lo:  in  March  1759  it  reappeared,  in  March, 
within  one  month  of  the  date ;  and  then  they  cal- 
culated more  closely  again,  and  in  1835  it 
rounded  the  sun  within  3  days  of  the  time  they 
had  figured.  But  nobody  can  do  that  with  the 
dream-star ! 

Well,  the  same  verification  holds  for  all  this 
realm  of  things  we  perceive  by  thought  or  mind. 
There  is  the  significance  of  Paul's  word  about 
''  comparing  spiritual  things  with  spiritual."  It 
is  just  as  easy  to  compare  the  impressions  which 


70  THE   VERIFICATION   OF   MIND 

two  characters,  or  two  thoughts  make  upon  the 
inner  sense,  as  to  compare  the  impressions  which 
two  bodies  or  substances  make  upon  the  eye. 
True,  the  inner  impressions  have  no  distinct  out- 
Hne,  but  they  are  far  more  intense.  My  inner 
sense  of  the  invisible  difference  between  a  good 
man,  and  a  base  scoundrel,  is  far  intenser  than 
any  outward  sense  of  the  difference  in  their  per- 
sons. And  it  is  by  trusting  this  inner  sense, 
about  qualities,  and  ideas,  and  motives  and  all 
sorts  of  invisible  things  that  all  human  law  has 
grown  up,  and  all  Philosophy  and  all  Religion. 
What  do  all  the  world's  vast  institutions  of  Jus- 
tice rest  upon?  What  is  ''justice"?  A  purely 
invisible  quality,  and  yet  all  the  institutions  built 
upon  that  invisible  quality,  are  just  as  stable 
and  certain  as  the  systems  of  Science  built  on  the 
visible  properties  of  things.  And  so  with  Re- 
ligion, in  the  deepest  ultimate  fact  of  it.  Re- 
ligion in  the  deepest  fact  of  it,  seems  to  be  a  sort 
of  instinctive  sense  of  life  behind  the  veil  of 
Nature;  life,  and  meaning,  in  Nature's  move- 
ments, something  as  man  discerns  life  and  mean- 
ing behind  the  veil  of  flesh  in  his  fellow  man. 
From  comparison  of  their  varying  impressions 
of  this  life  behind  Nature  men  have  risen  from 
the  first  rude  fetichism  to  the  highest  thoughts 
of  Religion.     Even  where,  in  its  higher  ranges. 


THE   VERIFICATION    OF    MIND  7I 

the  sense  of  Divine  communication,  has  come  in, 
it  is  still  by  comparison  of  impressions  which 
are  quite  impalpable  to  any  outward  sense  that 
the  prophet  has  come  to  be  sure  that  God  is  lead- 
ing him,  and  that  Christ  can  say :  "  The  words 
that  I  speak  unto  you,  I  speak  not  of  myself." 
There,  in  the  highest  experience,  that  inner  world 
of  souls,  and  goodness,  and  God,  becomes 
actually  more  real  than  all  the  outward  world  of 
trees  and  stones  and  the  moving  bodies  of  men. 
*  There  is  yet  one  more  verification  by  which 
men  justify  their  belief  in  the  reality  of  the  ex- 
ternal world,  and  which  is  really  just  as  strong 
for  justifying  our  belief  in  the  world  of  mind. 
I  mean  —  the  proof  by  action  and  life.  We 
verify  our  sensations  of  outward  things,  not  only 
by  comparing  what  we  think  we  see  and  feel, 
with  what  others  see  and  feel;  and,  not  only  by 
finding  that  the  knowledge  so  obtained  by  our- 
selves and  others  can  be  combined  into  system 
and  science,  —  but,  crowning  test  of  all,  we 
verify  these  sensations,  and  the  science  so 
elaborated  from  them  by  acting  upon  them.  If 
a  man  should  refuse  to  admit  that  his  bodily  sen- 
sations —  sight,  touch,  hearing  and  so  forth,  are 
anything,  any  indications  of  corresponding 
realities  —  simply  he  would  soon  cease  to  live. 
If  he  should  refuse  to  accept  the  science  men 


^2  THE   VERIFICATION    OF    MIND 

have  elaborated  by  comparison  and  calculations 
based  on  sight,  touch  and  hearing,  he  might  live 
indeed,  but  it  would  be  simply  the  life  of  the  sav- 
age. And  the  same  reasoning  will  lead  on  to 
living  with  the  same  trust  and  sense  of  reality 
in  all  the  higher  range  of  the  intellectual,  moral 
and  spiritual,  —  all  the  world  of  mind.  This  is 
an  orderly,  ordered  world  all  through.  Man 
rises  from  physical  facts  to  physical  laws.  But 
in  the  very  progress  which  leads  him  on  to  laws 
at  all,  he  comes  to  qualities  of  character. 
"  Character,"  ''  qualities  "  —  all  invisible,  but  yet 
very  real !  And  the  verification  by  action  and 
life,  if  it  applies  in  material  things,  is  worth  in- 
finitely more  in  moral  and  spiritual  things. 
Talk  of  the  mischief  which  would  come  of  a 
man^s  refusing  to  believe  in  his  sensations  of 
sight  or  touch,  what  is  that  compared  with  the 
mischief  which  would  come  of  his  refusing  to 
believe  in  his  inner  consciousness  of  truth,  right, 
goodness!  Practically  man  cannot  ignore  that 
inner,  moral  and  spiritual  consciousness.  He 
may  refuse  to  attend  to  it;  he  may  neglect  to 
observe  its  finer  teaching,  but  he  cannot  help 
feeling  something  of  it.  And  even  in  his 
neglect,  he  will  verify  it!  If  you  neglect  and 
disregard  moral  and  spiritual  perceptions  you 
bring  as  great  a  discord  and  confusion  into  life, 


THE   VERIFICATION    OF    MIND  73 

as  by  any  ignoring  of  physical  facts  or  laws  — 
nay,  a  greater,  more  terrible  discord.  It  is  even 
worse  to  run  your  head  against  a  moral  law,  than 
to  run  it  against  a  physical  law.  There  may  be 
no  outward  scar  to  shew  for  it;  the  slightest 
bodily  bruise  makes  more  visible  mark  that 
science  can  note,  than  the  breaking  of  half  the 
commandments  does,  but  none  the  less  life  is 
injured  in  its  very  innermost  and  intensest  be- 
ing. It  is  so,  even  at  the  very  beginning  of 
moral  and  spiritual  life;  but  it  is  when  you  look 
at  life  in  its  higher  and  nobler  developments  that 
this  verification  of  all  the  realm  of  mind  is  most 
striking.  When  you  come  face  to  face  with  any 
man  who  has  really  trusted  this  consciousness  of 
mind  and  soul  and  conscience  and  affection,  and 
lived  in  it,  a  word  of  his  deep  experience  shews 
that  it  is  realities  he  has  found,  and  in  which  he 
has  lived.  And  yet  here,  precisely,  it  is  (in  the 
case  of  those  who  have  most  believed  in  moral 
and  spiritual  things,  and  most  acted  on  their  be- 
lief) here  it  is  that,  if  their  course  has  been 
based  on  delusion,  it  would  show  most  con- 
spicuously. If  the  astronomer  has  reckoned  a 
casual  gleam  or  some  flaw  in  his  lense,  as  one 
of  the  stars  by  which  he  is  to  measure  the  mighty 
distances  of  space,  why,  the  more  accurately  he 
calculates  and  works  from  his  false  premises,  and 


74  THE  VERIFICATION  OF  MIND 

the  further  he  works  on  his  calculation,  so  much 
the  larger  and  more  palpable  will  be  the  error 
and  confusion  of  the  result.  So  if  the  moral  law 
of  conscience  be  a  fancy  of  ours  that  we  have  im- 
ported and  hypothecated  into  a  Universe  that 
has  only  material  law  in  it;  if  soul  be  a  mere 
conceit  of  our  own  self-consciousness,  and  if  God 
be  only  a  mirage  on  the  horizon  of  things  pro- 
duced by  a  want  of  clearness  in  our  sight,  it  will 
be  those  who  have  most  taken  conscience  and 
soul  and  God  into  their  account,  and  lived  by 
their  belief,  whose  results  in  life  should  exhibit 
the  most  palpable  blunder  and  the  most  chaotic 
confusion.  But  I  look  to  those  who  have  most 
treated  soul  and  conscience  and  God  as  realities, 
and  it  is  with  them  that  confusion  disappears.  I 
look  into  their  lives  and  by  those  lives  I  know 
that  their  faith  is  not,  at  least  in  its  deep  basis, 
a  blunder.  Of  course  they  may  differ,  and  make 
mistakes  about  these  things.  All  attempts  to 
define  or  describe  these  impalpable  realities  of 
mind,  —  must  be  more  or  less  imperfect,  but  in 
the  deep  basis  of  their  faith,  it  is  justified  and 
verified  by  life. 

And  now,  what  does  it  all  come  to?  This  is 
not  a  matter  of  abstract  theorizing,  still  less  of 
intricate  word-fencing.  I  have  set  all  this  before 
you  because  I  believe  that  it  touches  the  very 


THE   VERIFICATION   OF   MIND  75 

heart  of  our  daily  practical  living.  The  fact  is 
that  in  the  brilliant  and  wonderful  advances  of 
our  time  in  the  exploration  of  the  outv^^ard  Uni- 
verse and  the  Physical  man,  men  are  getting  to 
feel  as  if  these  were  all,  at  least  all  that  is  certain 
and  reliable.  And  they  are  not  all!  They  are 
not  even  half !  They  are  only  the  coarsest,  poor- 
est, grossest  part!  Infinitely  nobler,  grander, 
more  deeply  and  unchangeably  real,  is  that 
strange  element  of  life  which  stirs  within  us,  we 
know  not  how,  and  seems  almost  like  another 
subtler  universe!  Of  the  outward  material  Uni- 
verse, I  suppose  we  know  in  our  modern  science, 
a  hundred  times  as  much  as  did  the  ancient 
world;  and  it  is  little  wonder  perhaps  that  we 
fall  to  thinking  that  there  is  nothing  like  it.  Of 
that  inner  world  of  life  and  mind  —  we  do  not 
know  much  more  than  Plato  knew  when  he  tried 
to  analyse  Mind,  or  than  Christ  felt  when  he 
said  "  The  life  is  more  than  meat."  Now,  as 
then,  we  touch  it,  here  and  there,  in  a  few  great 
words,  Soul,  Affection,  Will,  Conscience,  and, 
over  all,  God  —  words  which  we  still  cannot  de- 
fine but  which  faintly  touch  and  signify  for  us 
life's  greatest,  infinitely  greatest  realities.  We 
want  to  have  more  faith  in  this  intangible  and 
yet  so  real  side  of  Being.  We  want  to  trust  in 
it  more,  to  live  in  it  more,  to  give  it  a  larger, 


76  THE  VERIFICATION  OF   MIND 

fuller  part  in  our  thinking  and  working!  For 
this  is  the  eternal  element  in  things!  The  earth 
changes;  Man's  noblest  frame  decays.  All 
man's  earthly  treasure  fades  and  dies;  but  Mind, 
Soul,  Affection,  Conscience  and  the  Divine 
Oversoul,  these  are  for  ever  and  for  ever ! 


THE  BUGBEAR  OF  THE  UNKNOWABLE 

I  THINK  it  is  a  help,  in  the  doubts  and  per- 
plexities of  our  own  time,  to  see  how  in  far  older 
and  different  times,  men  have  felt  very  much  the 
same  doubt  or  perplexity  as  we  do.  To  read 
how  the  Arabian  Poet  who  is  supposed  to  have 
written  the  Book  of  Job,  cries  out  ''  Canst  thou 
by  searching  find  out  God?"  and  how  the 
greatest  of  the  Hebrew  prophets,  longing  for  the 
Divine  Vision,  could  only  say  ''  Verily  thou  art 
a  God  that  hidest  thyself !  "  while  yet  they  never 
lost  their  faith  —  makes  it  is  a  little  easier  to  us 
still  to  believe  and  love  and  pray,  even  though 
the  longing  search  of  the  human  mind  is  still,  in 
the  last  resort,  baffled,  and  even  though  some 
would  counsel  us  to  give  up  the  whole  subject  as 
hopelessly  belonging  to  ''  the  unknown."  You 
often  hear  it  said :  "  Religion  is  a  subject  of 
which  no  one  can  really  know  anything !  "  and 
it  is  said  so  confidently,  and  as  if  it  were  a  self- 
evident  fact,  that  it  is  difficult  to  resist  the  im- 
pression of  it.  Now  it  seems  to  me  that  this 
reiteration  of  "  the  unknown "   is  being  rather 

77 


yS  THE    BUGBEAR   OF    THE    UNKNOWABLE 

overdone.  It  is  becoming  a  sort  of  bugbear,  al- 
most scaring  many  people  from  earnest  study  of 
the  subject  as  something  useless.  And  —  what 
is  almost  as  mischievous  is  the  way  it  also 
presses,  even  upon  those  who  do  hold  to  faith, 
who  join  in  the  old  pieties  of  the  world,  and  try 
to  keep  up  some  little  praise  and  prayer  of  their 
own  to  the  infinite  goodness  —  but  this  thought, 
which  is  in  the  very  air  of  our  time,  comes  again 
and  again,  like  a  little  chill  of  doubt.  , 

I  like  to  say  my  morning  prayer  looking  out 
of  the  window.  Thanksgiving,  to  every  true 
heart,  comes  naturally  anywhere  —  just  as  the 
mercies  of  the  day  come  to  us  in  the  common 
happenings  of  life;  but  for  prayer,  I  seem  to 
want  as  Daniel  did  —  the  open  window,  some 
outlook  on  earth  and  sky,  and  all  the  wonderful 
world,  even  if  it  may  be  only  the  grass  and 
flowers  of  some  common  garden,  or  even  a  tree 
or  two  above  the  city  roofs,  —  but  always  some- 
thing of  the  sky  and  the  wonderful  light.  I  dare 
say  many  of  you  who  read  this  feel  the  same  — 
and  if  you  do,  you  will  have  felt  how,  often,  the 
very  first  thought  as  you  look  out  is  this  wonder 
of  the  Infinite  mystery.  "  Oh  thou  to  whom  I 
am  praying,  how  I  long  to  know  Thee,  to  know 
what  Thou  art !  "  Thoughts  of  the  awful  vast- 
ness  of  this  Universe,  of  which  what  one  sees 


THE    BUGBEAR    OF   THE    UNKNOWABLE  79 

is  but  the  tiniest  fragment,  throng  into  the  heart, 
sometimes  almost  dazing  one.  ''Oh!  Thou  In- 
finite mystery,  what  art  Thou?  Art  Thou  such 
a  being  that  Thou  knowest  us  poor  human  crea- 
tures; and  that  I,  or  what  I  am,  or  what  I  do  or 
suffer,  or  anything  I  am  thinking  or  saying  in 
my  Httle  heart  of  worshipping,  can  be  anything 
to  Thee?" 

Yes,  there  is  the  unknowableness.  But  then 
comes,  quickly  following,  almost  as  if  it  were 
part  of  the  same  thought  —  the  sense  that  some- 
thing means  it  all.  Something  "  means "  it. 
That  is  the  word  which  to  me  seems  the  master- 
key  of  the  perplexity.  I  do  not  say:  the  key 
out  of  the  mystery,  but,  the  key  into  it  —  so  that 
it  seems  to  open  the  door  into  the  mystery,  that 
I  may  look  into  it,  and  enter  into  it,  feeling  that 
my  thoughts  are  not  simply  wandering  into  noth- 
ingness, but  into  the  innermost  realities  of  the 
universe,  and  a  presence  of  mysterious  life. 

That  is  how  the  matter  especially  in  these  later 
years  comes  to  me,  but  I  am  afraid  that  with 
many  it  is  hardly  so.  I  believe  that  to  many  in 
the  present  day  that  word  "  unknow^able  "  has 
become  a  sort  of  bugbear  seeming  to  rebuke  the 
very  faith  which  they  still  want  to  feel,  and  to 
make  all  real  religion  groundless  and  ridiculous. 
How,  it  is  asked,  can  any  one  believe  in  that 


8o  THE    BUGBEAR    OF   THE    UNKNOWABLE 

which  cannot  be  known?  How  can  one  even 
attach  any  idea  to  it,  or  have  any  feeling  towards 
it,  or  for  it?  And  all  this  sounds  plausible;  and 
thus  it  happens  that  many  people  feel  as  if  there 
was  nothing  for  it  but  agnosticism.  They  would 
be  glad  if  there  were  —  but  the  signs  seem  all 
the  other  way.  Instead  of  advancing  science 
bringing  us  nearer  to  some  knowledge  on  the 
deep  subjects  of  faith,  it  seems  even  to  be  push- 
ing them  further  and  further  away.  Frederic 
Harrison  says :  ''  The  growing  weakness  of  re- 
ligion has  long  been  that  it  is  being  thrust  inch 
by  inch  off  the  platform  of  knowledge."  And, 
however  people  may  regret  this,  they  feel  as  if 
there  were  no  resisting  it,  and  that  religion  as 
any  clear  thought  and  strong  helpful  faith  has 
to  be  practically  left  behind. 

Now  it  is  this  impression  that  I  want  to  do 
my  little  part  to  dispel.  Because  it  is  to  a  large 
extent  a  mere  impression,  and  an  impression 
partly  arising  from  an  unconscious  exaggeration 
of  the  term  "  unknown  "  when  applied  in  this 
realm  of  religion. 

I  think  there  is  some  help,  even  in  the  mere 
consideration  of  this  difference  between  the  part 
which  the  '*  unknown  "  plays  in  common  life,  and 
the  part  which  is  assumed  for  it  in  philosophy 
and  religion.     The  term  **  unknown  "  is  familiar 


THE  BUGBEAR   OF   THE   UNKNOWABLE  8 1 

enough  in  daily  life.  Heaps  of  things  are  un- 
known. Great  numbers  of  them  are  likely  al- 
ways to  be  so.  Our  knowledge  even  at  its  fur- 
thest and  fullest,  is  only  like  a  little  patch  of 
light,  which  soon  shades  off  into  a  limitless  un- 
known all  around  us.  And  even  the  things  we 
talk  of  ''  knowing  "  in  that  little  patch  of  light, 
we  only  know  partially.  I  know  that  my  desk 
is  wood ;  this  lamp,  metal ;  the  wall,  stone  —  and 
we  can  tell  each  other  various  things  about  each 
of  these  substances  as  we  call  them  —  and  we  call 
this  knowledge.  But  it  is  only  skin-deep  even 
with  regard  to  the  most  familiar  things.  Dif- 
ferent forms  of  matter  we  call  them  —  but  we 
do  not  know  what  matter  is  —  or  what  anything 
is,  in  its  absolute  reality.  Trees,  flowers,  or 
stones  that  you  saw  in  your  dreams  last  night, 
seemed  just  as  real  to  you  then,  as  these  do  now. 
But  this  ''  unknown  "  is  no  note  of  hopelessness 
or  intellectual  despair.  We  do  not  spell  it  with 
a  capital  "  U,"  or  elevate  the  frank  recognition 
of  it  into  a  special  class  or  school  of  thought. 
We  accept  it  as  one  of  the  conditions  of  our 
finite,  limited  being,  and  are  only  thankful  that 
in  the  midst  of  so  much  that  is,  and  is  likely  to 
be,  unknown,  we  can  make  out  so  much  —  not 
perfectly,  never  to  the  ultimate  fact  a  reality,  but 
sufficiently  to  enable  us  to  get  along  tolerably 


82  THE   BUGBEAR   OF   THE   UNKNOWABLE 

well,  and  to  have  a  good  practical  use  of  the 
world  and  of  our  life. 

But  now  when  we  leave  this  common  range 
of  visible,  familiar  things,  and  enter  into  the 
region  of  Philosophy  and  Religion,  at  once  the 
**  Unknown  "  begins  to  be  regarded  in  quite  an- 
other light.  It  is  put  as  a  great  thing  of  itself. 
It  must  be  spelled  with  a  capital  to  emphasize  it^ 
importance.  "  The  Unknown  "  is  talked  of,  as 
if  it  were  some  far-away  outer  void,  into  which 
no  investigation  could  penetrate,  and  in  ap- 
proaching which,  thought  itself  evaporates  into 
vague,  empty,  useless  speculation.  The  proper 
recognition  of  this  "  Unknown  "  is  elevated  into 
a  special  school  of  thought,  and  its  professors 
take  a  special  name,  "  Agnostics,"  which  name 
has  come  practically  to  indicate  those  who  do  not 
merely  accept  the  fact  of  so  much  being  Un- 
known, but  who  regard  this  religious  part  of  it 
as  Unknowable.  That  is  the  simple  fact  in  the 
field  of  human  study  to-day.  It  is  not  merely 
pointed  out  how  much  there  is  in  the  direction 
of  Religion  which  is  unknown  —  but  it  is  main- 
tained that  it  is  a  direction  in  which  knowledge 
is  inherently  impossible,  about  which  thought  is 
vain,  and  which  ought  now,  among  sensible  peo- 
ple, to  be  put  on  the  shelf  of  exploded  and 
abandoned   ideas,   like   Alchemy   or   Astrology. 


THE   BUGBEAR   OF   THE   UNKNOWABLE  83 

That  is  what  I  want  to  protest  against.  It  is 
discouraging  the  noblest  subject  of  human 
thought.  Here  in  this  realm  of  Religious  Faith 
is  the  region  in  which  the  human  heart  has  most 
longed  for  light,  into  which  the  human  mind  has 
most  earnestly  thought  and  studied  —  and  be- 
cause in  that  direction  the  exact  and  wonderful 
science  of  our  time  frankly  owns  that  it  is  able 
to  tell  us  nothing,  unable  to  find  out  anything, 
—  therefore  the  cry  is  raised  "  Unknow^n ! " 
"  Unknowable !  "  and  men  are  warned  off  from 
it  as  from  a  mere  quest  among  follies  and  delu- 
sions. 

I  do  not  think  that  this  attitude  will  turn  out 
to  be  the  real  or  final  attitude  of  science.  There 
are  many  men  eminent  in  science  who  altogether 
repudiate  any  such  attitude.  I  think  it  is  widely 
felt  among  the  multitudes  who  in  the  present 
day  are  eagerly  studying  science,  and  eagerly 
greeting  each  new  discovery,  that  while  none  of 
the  methods  of  science  bring  us  into  any  contact 
with  spiritual  and  religious  things,  or  even  are 
able  to  recognise  such  existences  —  yet  that  there 
is  no  reason  whatever  for  giving  up  belief  in 
them,  or  for  ceasing  to  strive  in  other  ways  to 
come  into  some  realising  contact  w^ith  them. 
There  may  well  be  other  ways  of  penetrating 
into  the  secrets  of  Universal  Being  than  by  the 


84  THE   BUGBEAR   OF   THE   UNKNOWABLE 

microscope,  or  the  telescope,  or  the  marvellous 
processes  of  chemistry!  Christ's  great  word 
that  "  the  Pure  in  heart  shall  see  God,"  may  yet 
come  to  be  recognised  —  not  as  men  generally 
take  it  now,  as  a  sort  of  shadowy  parable  from 
real  seeing,  but  as  exact  a  law  of  spiritual  per- 
ception, as  Kepler's  laws  of  Astronomical  inves- 
tigation are.  Love,  and  the  moral  sense,  and  a 
large  part  of  man's  best  and  most  real  life,  are 
equally  incapable  of  being  examined,  or  even 
taken  cognizance  of,  by  these  processes  of  Phys- 
ical Science.  Paul  would  say  they  are  ''  spiritu- 
ally discerned  "  —  but  they  are  very  real. 

I  find  another  help  in  turning  from  the  for- 
bidding vastness  of  that  term  "  unknown  "  as 
it  is  used  in  religious  philosophy,  to  its  use  in 
the  common  things  of  life.  In  that  Religious 
Philosophy  —  the  "  Unknown  "  is  usually  treated 
as  absolutely  unknown  —  nothing  at  all  known 
about  it.  But  the  moment  we  come  back  into 
common  life,  we  find  ourselves  talking  of  things, 
as  unknown  —  but  hardly  ever  with  any  such 
absolute  meaning.  In  fapt,  when  you  come  to 
look  naturally  into  it,  we  find  ourselves  conscious 
of  much  knowledge  about  many  things  which 
yet  are  unknown.  Life  is  full  of  illustrations 
of  this.     You  find  yourself  in  a  strange  room; 


THE   BUGBEAR   OF   THE   UNKNOWABLE  85 

perhaps  the  occupant  or  owner,  is  some  one  ab- 
solutely unknown  to  you.  But  you  will  not  be 
in  that  room  five  minutes,  with  an  open,  thought- 
ful mind,  without  knowing  something  of  that 
unknown  person.  The  pictures  on  the  walls, 
the  books  on  the  table,  the  kind  of  furniture,  the 
very  way  it  is  disposed  about  the  room,  will  tell 
you  something.  Or  take  an  illustration  that 
struck  me  years  ago,  in  one  of  Dr.  W.  B.  Car- 
penter's essays  on  this  very  matter.  He  sup- 
poses some  one  in  a  vast  manufactory,  full  of  all 
sorts  of  curious  and  intricate  workings.  This 
observer  traces  back  the  power  from  this  and 
that  machine,  along  straps,  and  pulleys,  and 
shafts  —  from  room  to  room  —  until  at  last  he 
comes  to  a  great  blank  wall,  in  which  the  shaft 
disappears.  Even  if  you  could  not  follow  it  any 
further,  he  says,  you  would  not  conclude  that 
behind  that  wall  is  nothing! 

Or,  take  a  human  being,  —  any  one  of  the 
multitudes  about  you.  Enough  of  "  unknown  *' 
and  '*  mysterious  "  there,  surely !  Granted  it  is 
somebody  you  **  know  "  —  how  much  do  you 
know?  Who  knows  what  man,  is?  Why,  this 
being,  which  we  call  man,  is  almost  as  much  be- 
yond our  real  ken,  as  God  is.  The  Microcosm  is 
as  unknown  as  the  Macrocosm !  Yet  in  all  sorts 
of  ways,  we  find  ourselves  getting  to  know  about 


S6  THE   BUGBEAR   OF   THE   UNKNOWABLE 

people,  and  the  deep  life  in  them,  at  every  turn, 
till  we  perhaps  say  we  know  them,  and  certainly 
can  love  them.  And  yet  the  wonderful  human 
being  remains  unknown;  *' unknowable  "  if  you 
will,  but  it  is  an  unknowableness  which  does  not 
prevent  all  sorts  of  feelings  of  love,  or  hate,  or 
fear,  and  all  sorts  of  relations  of  service  or  help- 
fulness. 

We  used  to  think  we  knew  who  was  the  author 
of  the  103rd  Psalm  —  that  wonderful  song  of 
thankfulness  and  trust :  "  Bless  the  Lord,  O  my 
soul,  and  all  that  is  within  me  bless  his  holy 
name ! "  Now,  we  do  not  know,  and  we  know 
that  we  do  not.  It  is  unknown,  unknowable. 
Yet  does  that  Psalm  the  less  awaken  reverence, 
thankfulness,  trust,  and  lead  us  to  the  innermost 
secret  of  human  feeling? 

Is  it  really  very  different  from  this,  with  re- 
gard to  that  infinite,  "  unknown  "  author  of  this 
vast  Universe,  to  whom  men  have  all  through  the 
ages  of  the  world  lifted  up  their  hearts  in  some 
kind  of  worship  and  called  by  some  greatest  name 
of  ''God"?  God  in  His  essence?  —  No,  we 
cannot  know  that,  but  God  in  his  manifestations, 
—  is  not  that  enough  to  do  away  with  all  feel- 
ings of  His  being  some  mere  vast  unknown  ab- 
straction? Translate  it  into  abstract  terms  if 
you  will.     Herbert  Spencer  will  allow  us  noth- 


THE    BUGBEAR   OF    THE    UNKNOWABLE  8/ 

ing  more  definite  tlian  this :  "  An  Infinite  and 
Eternal  energy,  from  which  all  things  proceed." 
This  he  speaks  of  as  ''  the  One  absolute  cer- 
tainty." Well  —  that  is  his  formula  for  the 
"  unknown,"  but  it  is  only  half  of  it  unknown, 
anyhow !  "  Infinite  and  eternal  energy,"  yes 
that  is  unknown  —  but  the  moment  you  pass  on 
to  "  from  which  all  things  proceed  "  you  are  in 
the  region,  not  of  the  unknown,  but  of  the 
known.  I  have  come  at  last  indeed  to  that 
"  Blank  Wall  "  Dr.  Carpenter  figured,  through 
which  I  can  trace  no  further  the  wonderful 
energy  which  is  working  through  these  great 
driving  shafts  which  fill  the  world  with  wonder- 
ful powers  and  workings,  evolving  all  things 
through  the  slowly  passing  cycles  and  periods. 
No,  I  cannot  trace  that  Energy  backwards,  but 
I  can  trace  it  forwards,  ever  evolving  things  to 
something  higher  and  nobler;  from  chaos  to 
order,  from  the  cooling  star-globe  to  the  rich 
earth  that  is  about  us  to-day;  from  the  rude  be- 
ginnings of  unconscious  life  to  conscious  man; 
from  man  only  just  emerging  from  the  brute, 
to  man  with  the  hint  of  the  angel  in  him,  and 
the  upward-reaching  sense  of  God !  "  Energy," 
is  it  that  only,  that  I  may  feel  certain  of,  as 
Science  leads  me  along  the  paths,  growing  every 
year  more  intricate,  by  which  we  trace  the  won- 


88  THE   BUGBEAR   OF   THE   UNKNOWABLE 

derful  workings  in  earth,  air,  sea,  light,  growth 
and  hfe?  As  it  shows  me  these,  and  bids  me 
simply  bow  down  to  the  ''  Unknowable,"  I  can- 
not help  replying  that  the  energy  from  which 
these  things  proceed  and  from  which  still  more 
proceeds  the  mind  that  studies  them  —  and  from 
which  proceeds  also  man's  moral  sense  —  and 
man's  strange  power  of  love,  I  cannot  call  that 
energy  entirely  unknown!  It  must  be  some- 
thing that  not  only  causes  these  things  to  be  but 
means  them ;  and  the  more  I  ponder  the  meaning 
which  comes  out  all  through  the  world,  and 
through  the  mind  and  life  of  man,  and  through 
the  larger  life  of  history,  and  all  the  world's 
long  struggle  for  truth  and  justice  and  right, 
I  still  may  not  know  the  absolute  name,  but 
it  must  be  some  name  greater,  diviner  than 
force  or  energy,  some  name  that  shall  express 
not  how  much  there  is  that  is  still  unknown,  but 
how  much  there  is  that  we  do  know,  and  for 
which  our  hearts  cannot  help  crying  out  in  some 
glory  of  thanksgiving.  I  do  not  mean,  that 
even  looked  at  this  way,  everything  is  clear. 
There  are  still  mysteries  of  pain  and  suffering 
among  God's  works,  which  taken  apart,  do  not 
seem  to  carry  any  meaning  of  goodness  in  them. 
The  awful  horrors  of  massacre  and  torture  in 
the  East,  how  can  God  suffer  such  things  to  be. 


THE   BUGBEAR   OF   THE   UNKNOWABLE  89 

some  cry  —  but  the  nearer  mystery  to  me,  is ; 
how  can  men  suffer  such  things  to  be?  The 
great  meanings  that  have  been  coming  out 
through  all  the  slow  progress  of  history,  do  come 

—  some  of  them  at  least,  visibly  as  the  ages  pass. 
Things  grow  here  and  there  a  little  clearer,  and 
I  think  there  is  a  growing  confidence  that  that 
vast  power  that  is  at  the  heart  of  the  Universe 

—  though  still  unknown  —  is  not  only  a  power 
of  order,  but  of  more  than  order  —  goodness. 

So,  I  for  one  am  not  going  to  let  that  bugbear 
of  the  '*  unknown  "  oppress  me,  or  drive  me  from 
the  old  faith  which  all  through  the  best  ages  of 
man's  growth  has  looked  up  with  trust  and 
adoration  as  to  God,  albeit  unable  to  find  Him 
out  in  any  distinctness  or  perfection.  As  I  walk 
through  the  House  Beautiful  of  the  world,  I  will 
rejoice  in  the  sunshine,  feel  the  awe  of  the  storm, 
and  bow  before  the  wonders  which  make  the 
whole  more  wonderful  from  year  to  year,  and 
though  I  may  not  see  the  Lord  of  the  House 
Beautiful,  face  to  face,  I  will  not  call  Him  ''  un- 
known.'' I  cannot  but  join  hands  with  those  — 
all  the  nameless  multitude  of  souls,  who  through 
the  long  procession  of  the  generations,  have 
never  seen  His  face  yet  never  felt  Him  a  mere 
vast  unknown,  but  the  dear  presence  of  Infinite 
love  and  goodness.     And  where  our  vision,  at 


90  THE   BUGBEAR   OF   THE   UNKNOWABLE 

times,  seems  very  dim,  there  are  purer  and  holier 
ones,  who  have  seen  with  purer  hearts,  and  with 
the  faith  which  is  more  than  outward  sight.  Let 
us  walk  with  them  —  and  most  of  all  with  the 
great  leader  of  the  pure  in  heart  —  let  us  walk 
with  Him  in  his  ways  of  prayer,  trust  and  help- 
ful love,  and  I  think  it  will  still  be  with  us,  as  it 
has  been  with  so  many,  that  he  will  show  us  the 
Father,  make  very  close  and  seal  the  Infinite 
Fatherhood,  anl  help  us  to  walk  and  live  if  not 
yet  in  the  light  yet  always  towards  it ! 


THE   REALITY   OF   REVELATION   AND 
AUTHORITY 

In  considering  the  great  "  thought-problems  " 
—  especially  of  Religion,  a  feeling  besets  me 
that  our  modern  world  —  I  mean  the  part  that 
really  thinks  —  is  putting  a  little  too  much  upon 
mere  processes  of  reasoning,  and  especially  upon 
what  the  individual  can  make  out  by  such  mere 
reasoning.  So  I  want  to  put  in  a  plea  for  those 
old-fashioned  things  —  Revelation  and  Author- 
ity. Of  course  we  have  to  lift  those  great 
words  out  of  some  of  the  old  low  and  wrong 
uses  of  them  —  but  still,  my  point  is  that  at  the 
heart  of  the  idea  of  Revelation  and  also  of  Au- 
thority, there  are  great  everlasting  realities, 
which  have  been  too  much  left  out  of  late. 

Thus  with  Revelation.  Revelation  has  been 
regarded  as  the  whole  of  the  Bible  —  a  certain 
set  of  Divine  communications  to  man,  dictated 
by  the  Spirit  of  God;  and  then  Authority  has 
simply  meant  that  men  are  to  bow  down  to  these 
communications  and  just  accept  them  and  be- 
lieve them.     Now  we  cannot  regard  the  Bible 

91 


92  REVELATION    AND    AUTHORITY 

in  any  such  way.  To  us,  it  is  not,  just  as  it  is, 
a  Revelation  —  and  yet  wq  freely  speak  of  it 
as  containing  the  records  of  many  Revelations. 
And  what  we  mean  is  this :  the  very  highest  and 
clearest  discernings  of  religious  truth  in  the 
world,  have  not  come  by  the  slow  climbing 
steps  of  reasoning,  nor  as  conclusions  patiently 
built  up  by  stage  upon  stage  of  argument.  No. 
The  very  clearest  and  intensest  discernings  of 
Religious  Truth  have  come  in  the  souls  of  the 
holiest  and  purest  not  as  things  proved  to  them 
but  rather  as  something  shown  to  them,  revealed 
in  them.  They  have  always  felt  that  this  clear 
light  and  vision  was  not  something  of  their  own 
working  out,  but  something  wrought  in  them  or 
showed  to  them  by  the  Spirit  of  God.  Then,  as 
they  have  told  these  great  things  to  their  fellow- 
men,  men  have  owned  them  as  their  masters,  as 
their  teachers.  And  my  point  is,  that  in  the 
working  out  of  our  religious  faith,  we  have  to 
allow  a  very  large  place,  not  an  absolute  au- 
thority but  a  very  real  one,  to  these  revelations 
in  the  holiest  of  our  race. 

And  let  me  clearly  say  at  once  that  I  claim  a 
place  for  Revelation  and  Authority  in  Religion 
because  I  find  that  they  have  place  in  every  other 
branch  of  human  thought.  My  thought  starts 
with  this;  we  must  not  rest  too  much  upon  the 


REVELATION   AND  AUTHORITY  93 

individual.  I  admit  the  capacity  and  the  sacred- 
ness  of  the  individual  faculties,  but  that  does  not 
involve  that  all  individuals  have  equal  faculties 
nor  that  any  could  work  out  a  complete  religious 
thought  for  themselves.  No!  such  individual- 
ism in  religion  would  be  such  a  burden  as  man 
has  not  to  bear,  does  not  bear,  in  any  direction 
of  his  thinking  or  investigating.  There  may  be 
no  branch  of  study  in  which  each  man  might  not 
possibly  investigate  everything  and  find  out 
everything  for  himself.  There  may  be  no  abso- 
lute impossibility  to  hinder  you  and  me  from 
becoming  as  good  astronomers  as  those  who  can 
predict  an  eclipse  within  4  seconds;  as  good 
scientists  in  any  branch  as  those  who  are  work- 
ing out  the  wonders  of  biology  or  electricity. 
But  it  is  not  likely  we  shall  be,  and  certainly  the 
abstract  possibility  does  not  lessen  the  value  of 
their  work.  We  listen  to  them  as  authorities. 
You  see  we  constantly  use  the  very  word  in 
Science,  that  men  so  kick  against  in  Religion. 
We  believe,  indeed,  that  we  might  verify  for  our- 
selves all  they  tell  us.  But  we  do  not  do  it.  We 
do  not  think  of  doing  it.  We  feel  that,  some- 
how, their  faculties,  though  not  different  from 
ours,  have  become  educated  to  that  point  that 
they  can  see  things  which  you  and  I  cannot  see, 
and  we  sit  at  their  feet,  are  their  willing  and 


94  REVELATION   AND   AUTHORITY 

grateful  disciples.  It  is  not  an  absolute  au- 
thority we  give  them,  but  it  is  a  very  real  au- 
thority. That  is  hov^  the  world  makes  progress. 
What  would  man's  astronomy  amount  to  if  each 
man  who  was  anxious  about  the  stars  had  to 
work  out  the  whole  subject  for  himself  de  novo? 
What  would  any  science  amount  to,  if  each  gen- 
eration started  with  a  clean  sheet?  But  it  is 
not  so.  *'  This  generation  seemeth  a  giant," 
says  Lord  Bacon,  *'  because  it  standeth  upon  the 
shoulders  of  the  past."  The  race  is  bound  up 
together.  As  the  ages  pass,  some  things  are 
settled  not  to  be  perpetually  re-opened.  A  few 
great  minds  carry  forward  wiiole  generations, 
and  teach  in  a  year  what  ordinary  minds  could 
not  have  made  out  for  themselves  in  a  century. 

Now  it  is  just  the  same  in  religion,  as  in 
everything  else.  In  religion,  too,  there  is  the 
same  help,  the  same  rest,  in  the  teachings  of  the 
loftiest  souls  and  the  great  accumulated  convic- 
tions of  mankind. 

But  it  may  be  said  that  in  all  science  we  are 
dealing  not  with  anything  akin  to  revelation, 
truth  directly  perceived  in  the  mind,  but  with 
carefully  worked  out  knowledge,  and  that  we 
take  it  because  we  know  it  has  been  so  worked 
out,  and  may  be  proved.  Let  us  then  look  into 
other  branches  of  human  attainment,  in  which 


REVELATION    AND   AUTHORITY  95 

there  seems  a  sort  of  direct  faculty,  an  inner 
sight  or  sense,  which  cannot  be  proved  —  but 
which  we  accept  because  it  appeals  to  something- 
kindred  in  ourselves.  And  still  the  same  prin- 
ciple holds.  What  is  God's  way  of  providing 
man  with  Art,  Poetry,  Music?  Is  it  by  each  one 
being  his  own  Artist,  Poet,  Musician  ?  It  would 
be  pretty  poor  poetry  and  rather  unsettled  ideas 
of  art  and  music  we  should  have  in  that  case. 
But  no!  The  great  Providence  developes  these 
subtle  elements  in  man's  higher  nature  by  rais- 
ing up  a  few  who  become  teachers,  masters,  to 
the  rest.  "  Masters  "  —  no  one  feels  any  hes- 
itation in  speaking  of  "  The  Great  Masters  "  of 
Art,  Poetry,  Music;  why  should  we  not  recog- 
nise the  same  mastership  in  the  Religious  Life? 
Perhaps  someone  will  say  *'  Oh,  but  we  use  the 
word  ''  Master  "  in  a  different  way  in  speaking 
of  some  Musician  who  has  given  the  world  a  new 
thought  of  Music,  and  in  speaking  for  instance 
—  of  Christ.  But  surely  it  is  only  a  difference 
of  degree.  It  indicates,  in  each  case  a  sort  of 
unapproachable  and  inexplicable  greatness  which 
makes  them  our  Teachers,  great  lights  to  us  each 
in  his  own  special  realm.  And  there  is  another 
point  of  similarity  in  the  rarity  of  these  few 
greatest  leaders.  A  friend  said  to  me  one  day; 
"  I  cannot  take  in  that  idea  of  Christ  being  so 


96  REVELATION   AND   AUTHORITY 

unique  and  above  all  others."  My  answer  was 
"  How  many  Shakespeares  have  there  been  ?  " 
And  it  is  a  fair  answer.  Do  you  see?  As  you 
reach  up  among  the  higher  faculties  of  Man,  the 
great  masters  become  fewer.  And  also  note  that 
their  peculiar  excellence  is  more  entirely  beyond 
the  attainment  of  ordinary  nature  —  a  gift  we 
call  it.  The  great  Musician's  gift  or  the  great 
Poet's  —  it  is  not  something  they  slowly  work 
out  —  it  is  a  real  revelation  in  them  and  they  in 
turn  become  revealers  to  others.  They  do  not 
so  much  touch  men  as  reveal  to  them  whole 
heights  and  depths  of  beauty,  harmony,  quite  be- 
yond ordinary  natures.  There  is  a  perfect 
parallel  in  all  these  realms  of  study  and  when  you 
look  at  them  so,  you  see  that  it  is  just  as  natural 
for  there  to  be  a  few  mighty  leaders,  revealers, 
authorities  in  religion  as  in  music  or  in  poetry. 

And  mark  again  how  exactly  parallel  is  the 
relation  of  their  higher  faculties  to  our  average 
faculties  in  both  these  realms.  The  faculties  are 
the  same  in  small  and  great,  in  the  masters  and 
revealers  and  in  the  multitude.  There  is  no  ab- 
solute difference  between  the  subtle  sense  which 
makes  your  little  child  pleased  with  a  street  organ 
and  the  genius  which  endows  a  Mendelssohn  or 
a  Wagner.  No  absolute  line  divides  your  poetic 
sense  which  is  touched  by  a  few  sweet  verses. 


REVELATION   AND   AUTHORITY  97 

from  the  poetic  genius  which  made  Shakespeare. 
Nay  —  it  is  just  because  it  is  so,  because  all  have 
something  of  these  faculties,  that  those  who  have 
them  in  highest  degree  are  recognised  by  the 
rest  and  take  their  thrones.  Beethoven  would 
be  no  king  of  Harmony  to  a  race  that  could  not 
even  distinguish  one  musical  tone  from  another. 
The  great  musicians  are  great,  because  the  com- 
mon race  have  at  least  music  enough  in  them  to 
appreciate  the  great  ones,  though  not  enough  to 
be  the  great  ones.  A  little  poetic  feeling  that 
would  not  be  enough  to  enable  a  man  to  write  a 
line  of  poetry,  is  quite  enough  to  feel  the  spell 
of  poetry  and  own  the  great  Poet,  and  rest  in  his 
great  thoughts  as  a  real  and  beautiful  revelation 
to  our  hearts. 

Now  all  this  appears  to  be  very  much  the  same 
in  regard  to  Religion.  Of  all  the  varied  range 
of  the  elements  and  surroundings  of  man's  be- 
ing. Religion  is  the  highest,  and  touches  a  higher 
influence  than  anything  else.  Its  things,  its  re- 
lations, are  all  invisible;  but  so  are  the  relations, 
harmonies,  which  constitute  Poetry,  Art,  Music. 
Is  it  not  reasonable,  then,  in  man's  Religious 
life,  to  expect  that  while  the  race  in  general  shall 
have  some  feeling  in  the  direction  of  religion, 
it  shall  be  only  a  few  loftiest  souls  here  and  there 
who  are  the  great  teachers,  revealers  —  Masters 


98  REVELATION   AND  AUTHORITY 

—  to  the  rest?  There,  then,  in  the  place  and 
power  of  Revelation,  in  religion,  as  in  all  the 
higher  elements  of  life  —  to  lift  up  the  dim  com- 
mon feeling  of  men  into  a  clearer  brighter  light, 
a  higher  assurance,  than  the  average  humanity 
could  ever  attain  for  itself,  and  so  from  time  to 
time  in  human  history,  to  put  in  permanent  au- 
thoritative shape,  the  great  foundation  truths 
on  which  man's  soul  may  rest. 

But  then,  some  one  may  ask  —  how  do  we 
know  which  are  the  great  Revealers  and  Authori- 
ties in  the  religious  life?  How  do  we  know,  for 
instance,  that  those  old  Bible  leaders,  and  Christ 
at  the  head  of  them,  have  any  such  real  revela- 
tion for  us,  in  which  we  may  feel  that  divine 
things  have  been  made  clearer  for  us,  and  to 
which  we  may  look  as  to  some  reliable  master- 
ship? Our  parallel  still  holds.  You  do  not  go 
casting  about  for  proof  as  to  who  are  the  great 
masters  in  science,  poetry,  music!  There  is  no 
proof.  It  is  not  even  by  any  vote  that  Mendels- 
sohn stands  as  a  great  musician,  and  Shakespeare 
as  a  great  poet.  Simply  the  feeling  and  experi- 
ence of  generations  sifts  them  out,  lets  the  small 
side-names  and  influences  go,  crowns  the  few 
mightiest  with  wreaths  of  light  which  glitter 
more  than  gold  or  diamonds !  And  so  the  great- 
est names  in  the  religious  life  of  mankind,  stand 


REVELATION   AND   AUTHORITY  99 

perfectly  plain.  There  is  no  mistaking  them. 
And  I  do  not  speak  of  Christ  alone.  We  are 
growing  out  of  that  poor  conceit  that  the  light 
of  God  never  shone  anywhere  but  in  Palestine. 
Let  us  be  thankful  for  all  the  great  lights  of  the 
ancient  world.  The  Vedic  teachers  of  the  ori- 
ginal, pure  Brahamism;  Zoroaster;  Confucius; 
all  made  Divine  things  clearer  and  more  real  to 
countless  millions  —  real  revealers  in  their  time 
—  and  still  I  think  it  stands  out  more  clearly  to- 
day than  ever,  that  there  has  been  no  religious 
light  in  the  world  so  strong  and  pure  as  that 
which  shines  along  the  great  Bible  lines  and  cul- 
minates in  Christ.  It  is  not  one  revelation,  it  is 
a  line  of  revelations  —  Law-giver  and  Prophet 
and  Psalmist;  not  pure  and  absolute  revelations, 
but  very  real  ones,  real  revealings  to  men  of 
brighter  nobler  truth  from  age  to  age,  and  at  the 
head  of  all,  the  holiest,  divinest  life  of  earth  — 
a  life  which  though  it  also  became  overlaid  with 
corruptions,  false  glorifications  and  all  manner  of 
superstitions,  has  still  lived  quietly  on  in  its  old 
simplicity  in  these  gospels  and  has  kept  shining 
forth  again  and  shines  to-day,  clearer,  I  think, 
than  ever,  still  revealing  the  highest  realities  of 
Being,  with  the  old  and  solemn  certainty  of  a 
heart  that  dwelt  in  God  and  knew  him  at  first 
hand,  spirit  with  spirit. 


100  REVELATION  AND  AUTHORITY 

I  have  shown  then,  as  I  think,  that  there  is 
such  a  thing  as  revelation  —  a  sort  of  direct  per- 
ception of  spiritual  truth,  not  worked  out  by 
steps  of  careful  reasoning,  but  coming  like  a 
light  of  God  within ;  —  and  that  it  has  been  those 
who  have  had  this  supreme  inner  light  who,  as 
a  fact,  have  been  the  religious  leaders  and 
teachers  of  mankind. 

And  now  I  want  to  put  one  or  two  matters 
touching  the  relation  of  all  this  to  our  own 
powers  and  faculties,  and  what  should  be  our 
attitude  towards  it. 

The  special  point  that  I  want  to  bring  out  is 
this;  that  this  distinct  recognition  of  Revelation 
and  this  feeling  of  its  authority,  are  not  for  a 
moment  to  be  regarded  as  something  that  is  to 
take  the  place  of  our  own  thinking  and  to  which 
we  are  to  give  a  blind  and  absolute  submission. 
This  is  where  I  find  people  hesitating  and  per- 
plexed. They  do  not  seem  to  understand  how 
one  can  speak  of  authority  in  religion,  unless 
there  is  something  to  point  to  as  a  pure,  un- 
mixed, infallible  Revelation  which  may  be  a  final, 
absolute,  authority.  But  that  is  not  so.  You 
see  at  once  that  it  is  not  so  in  these  other 
branches  of  human  study.  The  great  Masters 
are  authorities  —  we  never  hesitate  to  speak  of 
them  as  such  —  but  their  authority  is  not  abso- 


REVELATION    AND   AUTHORITY  lOI 

lute.  We  revise  our  judgment  of  this  great  poet; 
our  estimate  of  this  musician.  What  we  need 
to  recognise  is,  that  there  are  no  final,  absolute 
authorities  in  this  world,  on  any  subject.  In  all, 
we  have  to  use  the  best  light  that  comes  to  us 
from  the  great  acknowledged  teachers,  and  also 
the  best  light  in  the  world's  growing  thoughts 
and  faculties.  And  sometimes  those  great  lights 
are  not  clear;  and  sometimes  our  own  thoughts 
are  not  clear  —  but  between  them,  we  have  to  do 
the  best  we  can.  There  is  no  final  absolute  au- 
thority on  any  subject  —  not  even  on  Religion. 
The  light  of  the  world's  purest  religious  revela- 
tions comes  down  to  us  in  a  Bible  in  which  have 
gathered  many  things  out  of  that  old  Hebrew 
life  besides  its  Revelations.  So  the  words  and 
life  of  Christ  come  down  to  us,  with  some  things 
mixed  in  here  and  there  which  Christ  possibly 
never  said  or  did!  But  what  of  that?  The 
Bible  won  its  place  and  holds  its  place,  because, 
amidst  whatever  of  earthly  errors  and  mistakes 
it  has,  the  light  of  God,  illumining  and  inspiring 
a  succession  of  Holy  Souls  and  above  all  the  soul 
of  Christ,  shines  out  so  clear,  so  bright,  so  strong, 
that  there  is  no  other  book  like  it  in  the  world. 
But  it  is  by  using  the  light  in  ourselves  that  we 
find  the  light  in  the  Bible.  Christ's  appeal  was 
always  — ''  He  that  hath  ears  to  hear,  let  him 


102  REVELATION   AND  AUTHORITY 

hear."  It  was  the  reHgious  nature  already  in 
them  which  enabled  them  to  feel  that  higher  re- 
ligious nature  in  him,  and  to  feel  the  power  of 
his  teaching,  as  he  spoke  to  them  with  authority. 
So  they  heard  him  gladly  when  he  gave  forth  the 
Sermon  on  the  Mount,  because  they  felt  its  truth. 
But  they  could  not  have  composed  the  Sermon 
on  the  Mount.  It  was  a  real  revelation  to  them, 
making  the  whole  life  of  God  and  man  clearer 
to  them  than  ever  before.  And  so  it  has  been 
to  men  ever  since,  precisely  because,  though  only 
a  Christ  could  have  originated  it,  all  have  power 
to  appreciate  it. 

There  is  the  power  of  Revelation.  That 
which  mere  reasoning  could  not  have  done,  that 
which  reasoning  can  even  find  many  a  little  fault 
in  (sceptics  pick  many  a  hole  in  the  great  "  Ser- 
mon ")  has  come  as  light  to  the  world.  Prac- 
tically, the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  stands  at  the 
head  of  the  moral  and  religious  utterances  of 
the  world.  And  this  not  for  its  mere  details  of 
duty,  but  for  its  great  spirit  of  life!  Life  in 
the  Will  of  God  —  God,  prayer,  love,  eternity, 
—  all  are  in  it  —  not  as  the  thesis  of  an  argu- 
ment, but  as  the  light  of  a  Revelation.  And  so 
with  all  the  great  teachings  of  the  Bible.  Do 
not  for  a  moment  leave  even  the  ignorant  and 
unlearned  with  the  old  idea  that  they  have  got 


REVELATION   AND  AUTHORITY  IO3 

to  take  everything  in  it  as  Divine.  Teach  them 
to  read  it  all  intelligently  —  but  my  point  is  that 
the  more  they  do  read  it  intelligently,  the  more 
they  will  feel  the  solemn  authoritative  v^eight 
with  which  its  great  testimonies  of  God  and  Duty 
come  down  through  all  the  ages  that  have  tried 
them  and  found  them  true. 

And  do  not  suppose  that  I  would  speak  of 
those  great  Revelations  of  the  past  as  merely  a 
refuge  for  the  ignorant  and  unlearned!  Look 
to  the  quite  higher  range  of  minds,  the  leaders 
of  religious  movements,  those  who  have  most 
experienced  the  reality  and  power  of  religion  for 
themselves,  —  George  Fox,  Wesley,  Channing, 
—  those  who  have  come  nearest  to  the  Spirit  of 
God  at  first  hand,  and  so  might  seem  to  be  most 
above  any  need  of  the  help  of  those  few  greatest 
ones  whom  men  have  hailed  as  Revealers.  It 
might  seem  that  these  would  care  least  for  any 
help  of  the  Bible,  and  would  be  most  impatient 
of  any  idea  of  sitting  at  the  feet  of  Christ.  But 
has  it  been  so?  The  very  opposite!  Why, 
these  have  been  the  very  ones  who  have  prized 
the  Bible  most,  most  loved  to  study  it,  most 
laboured  to  elucidate  it,  most  delighted  to  live 
their  religious  life  in  the  light  of  its  grand 
Psalms  and  Prophecies  and  especially  in  that 
clearest  light  of  Christ. 


104  REVELATION   AND  AUTHORITY 

Or  look  to  the  mass  of  average  people  v^ho  can 
think  for  themselves,  v^ho  are  thinking,  and  are 
going  to  think  more  and  more:  It  is  just  this 
average  life  which  is  to-day  most  touched  with 
the  spirit  of  scepticism  —  which  is  largely  giving 
up  Bible  reading,  which  is  saying  — "  Why 
should  we  pay  any  special  attention  to  what 
Christ  said  —  "  and  which  is  falling  back  upon 
the  individualism  which  says  —  as  one  said  to 
me  the  other  day  —  that  in  these  religious  things, 
"  One  man  knows  just  as  much  or  as  little  as  an- 
other; and  every  one  must  just  make  out  what  he 
can  for  himself." 

Well  —  how  does  this  mere  individualism 
work?  It  does  not  work  at  all.  It  lands  men 
in  mere  confusion  and  uncertainty.  Watch  the 
common  state  of  mind  of  those  who  thus  put 
away  all  idea  of  any  Revelation  in  the  past.  It 
is  not  that  they  become  simply  unbelievers. 
Nothing  of  the  kind!  Nothing  so  clear  and 
definite!  Simply  they  are  all  at  sea.  They  do 
not  know  whether  anything  can  be  believed. 
To-day,  some  strong  word  of  faith  takes  hold  of 
them  and  they  feel  there  must  be  something  in 
it.  To-morrow,  they  chance  upon  some  keen 
argument  of  scepticism  and  they  are  all  adrift 
again.  Now,  this  curious  uncertainty  which  is 
the  special  characteristic  of  to-day  —  what  does 


REVELATION    AND   AUTHORITY  IO5 

it  mean  ?  It  is  the  natural  result  of  a  generation 
which  cannot  indeed  get  quite  away  from  its 
own  deep  down  religious  nature,  but  which  is 
trying  to  grope  its  own  way,  has  dropped  the 
guiding  and  assuring  hand  of  the  past  and  cut 
loose  from  the  great  teachers  whose  clear  strong 
sense  of  Divine  things  has  for  ages  led  the  ever- 
growing life  of  mankind. 

That  is  why  I  bring  this  subject  before  you. 
I  believe  that  the  one  greatest  practical  need  of 
all  this  restless  thinking  of  the  present  day  is,  to 
be  put  once  more  in  connection  with  its  roots 
in  the  past;  to  cherish  a  more  habitual  sense  of 
the  significance  of  those  long  lines  of  gradually 
brightening  faith  which  came  to  their  brightest 
in  Christ,  to  rest  with  quieter  trust  in  the  great 
religious  truths  to  which  those  lines  have  led, 
and  which  they  practically  settled. 

This  is  the  help  which  I  have  found  myself, 
and  I  want  to  help  others  to  feel  it.  There  have 
been  times  in  my  life  —  I  dare  say  every  one  of 
you  has  experienced  the  same  —  when  I  needed 
no  help,  when  I  felt  no  doubt ;  when  God  and  Im- 
mortality were  just  as  plainly  real  to  me  as  the 
sun  in  Heaven.  Ah,  if  one  could  be  always  at 
that  height !  If  one  could  fix  the  soul  in  one  of 
those  hours  of  clearest  faith,  then  we  might  not 
need  any  help  of  the  past,  nor  any  more  authori- 


I06  REVELATION   AND   AUTHORITY 

tative  conviction  than  our  own.  But  then,  who 
can  do  this?  With  most,  those  hours  of  dear 
personal  vision  are  only  few  and  far  between. 
There  come  other  times  when  the  soul  strains  its 
gaze  into  the  surrounding  mystery  and  can  see 
nothing  clearly,  and  feels  as  if  all  were  doubtful. 
Yet,  is  all  doubtful?  Surely  not!  Is  this  great 
world  of  outward  forms  and  substances  less  real 
because  some  are  altogether  blind,  and  many 
colour-blind,  and  the  eyes  of  all,  at  times  so 
dimmed  by  pain  or  tears,  that  they  know  not 
what  is  real  ?  And  so  that  great  spiritual  world, 
of  Soul,  and  God,  and  Prayer,  and  Life  beyond, 
is  not  really  doubtful  because  the  mists  of  doubt 
or  sin  so  often  cloud  the  inner  sight  or  because 
our  thoughts  are  sometimes  dazed  by  the  very 
intensity  of  thinking.  Ah,  it  is  then  I  feel  the 
help  of  those  old  Bible  pages  in  which  the 
Psalmists  and  Prophets  of  the  past  bear  witness 
to  the  ever  brightening  truth  of  God.  It  is  there 
that  comes  in  the  help  of  him  whose  faith  was 
never  wavering,  whose  sight  was  never  dim,  and 
out  of  whose  constant  communion  with  God, 
came  such  clear,  inspired  certainty.  Yes!  In 
him  I  feel  the  larger  life  which  arches  over  these 
shifting  moods  of  Man.  In  him  I  know  that  it 
is  not  my  times  of  doubt,  but  my  times  of  faith 
that  correspond  to  the  eternal  realities  of  things 


REVELATION   AND   AUTHORITY  I07 

—  and  resting  so,  sitting  at  the  Master's  feet,  by 
and  bye  the  times  of  faith  come  back  with  their 
new  strength  for  life. 

Mark  you,  it  is  not  some  minute  system  of  doc- 
trine, such  as  Theologians  have  worked  up  into 
their  creeds  that  thus  comes  to  me.  I  think  the 
more  I  study  Christ's  life  and  word,  and  feel  a 
light  and  power  of  revelation  in  it,  the  less  in- 
clined I  am  to  try  to  settle  all  the  details  of  be- 
lief, which  yet  are  interesting  enough  in  a  way. 
But  what  comes  to  me,  is,  a  great  certainty  at  the 
foundation  of  things,  a  conviction  deeper  than 
any  argument,  that  all  that  side  of  life  is  real  — 
God,  worship,  duty,  immortality  —  and  that  is 
what  we  all  most  need. 

This  word  I  am  trying  to  say  is  one  which 
seems  to  me  to  grow  more  and  more  important. 
Just  because  education  is  spreading,  just  because 
all  subjects  are  canvassed  and  discussed  as  never 
before,  perhaps  since  the  great  intellectual  out- 
break of  the  Renaissance  and  the  great  outbreak 
of  religious  thought  at  the  Reformation  —  just 
because  there  is  a  tendency  to  ask  for  everything 
to  be  proved,  is  it  important  to  remind  men  that 
in  all  the  higher  department  of  human  nature, 
the  best  things  are  not  susceptible  of  proof,  do 
not  come  by  argument,  but  rise  up  in  the  holiest 
souls  in  that  "  inner  sight "  "  which  is  the  bliss 


I08  REVELATION    AND   AUTHORITY 

of  solitude "  and  so  become  simply  "  revela- 
tions "  to  the  common  world.  It  has  kept  com- 
ing to  me  more  and  more,  from  my  observa- 
tion of  the  w^orld  and  from  my  ov^n  con- 
sciousness —  this  sense  of  hov^  v^e  need  some- 
thing to  rest  in,  something  to  preach  from,  more 
strong  and  sure  and  unchanging  than  individual 
thought  —  and  v^ith  this  the  sense  that  v^e  have  it 
—  here  in  this  Spirit  and  Word  of  Jesus  Christ. 
I  believe  that  this  is  what  the  world  needs  to- 
day. There  is  a  deep  craving  abroad  for  some 
certainty  in  Religion  —  to  know  —  not  all  the 
details  of  Divine  Realities,  I  think  there  never 
was  more  impatience  of  all  pretence  to  map  out 
these  —  but  to  be  sure  of  the  foundation,  that 
the  Divine  is  real  and  man's  life  folded  in  by 
Divine  meaning,  and  moving  on  within  the  care 
of  infinite  Love.  And  this  is  here  for  us,  in  that 
"  mind  of  the  Master  "  which  even  in  our  own 
day  has  been  brought  out  with  a  new  clearness 
and  is  at  once  the  highest  thought  of  man  and 
the  revelation  of  the  heart  of  God.  I  want  us 
to  put  our  hands  in  his  and  walk  with  him  in 
the  ways  of  the  spirit.  Praising  God,  and  pray- 
ing, with  Him,  doing  all  kind  and  helping  things 
we  can  to  those  about  our  way,  with  Him,  and 
thinking  towards  all  further  truths,  to  the  fur- 
thest limit  of  our  own  mind  and  vision,  and  when 


REVELATION   AND   AUTHORITY  I09 

we  fail,  cleaving  to  him  still  in  what  discipleship 
we  may;  knowing  that  with  that  spirit,  that  up- 
ward look  and  trust,  that  life  —  with  man,  in 
God  —  is  the  secret  of  all  ultimate  truth,  and  the 
way  of  final  light. 


THE   HUMAN   HEART   OF   GOD 

I  TAKE  this  word,  of  the  human  heart  of  God 
as  an  expression  for  a  divine  love,  compassion- 
ateness,  companionship,  more  close  and  tender 
than  any  Theology  has  ever  dared  to  formulate, 
or  than  any  Theological  term  can  express.  I 
think  that  it  was  this  which  Christ  was  con- 
stantly trying  to  teach  men.  He  felt  how  far 
away  men  were  from  any  happy  realising  sense 
of  a  real  fatherly  companionship  in  their  actual 
life.  They  believed  in  God.  They  believed  that 
this  great  world  was  his  creation.  They  believed 
that  in  the  far-off  past.  He  had  come  very  close 
to  Abraham  and  Isaac  and  the  great  patriarchs, 
and  that  Moses  in  the  awful  solitudes  of  Mount 
Sinai  had  heard  his  very  words  and  written  them 
down  for  men,  for  ever;  and  in  their  great 
Psalmists  and  Prophets  his  spirit  and  teaching 
had  come  into  their  souls  with  a  Divine,  uplift- 
ing and  illuminating  power.  But  they  had  no 
sense  of  anything  of  this  kind  now.  The  near- 
est they  could  come  to  it  was  to  go  to  the  syna- 
gogue and  read  how  the  saints  of  old  had  felt 

III 


112  THE   HUMAN    HEART   OF   GOD 

about  God,  or  sometimes  when  they  were  able 
to  visit  the  Temple  itself  to  feel  how  in  the  Holy 
of  Holies  there,  God's  presence  was  so  perfect 
that  even  the  High  Priest  dare  only  enter  it  once 
a  year.  But  as  for  Peter,  when  he  was  sitting 
mending  his  nets  and  getting  ready  for  a  night's 
fishing,  having  any  feelings  of  God  being  with 
him,  or  that  it  would  be  a  pleasant  sense  of  com- 
panionship to  think  of  Him  so  —  or  as  for 
Peter's  wife,  in  the  midst  of  her  house-work  or 
when  the  bed-ridden  mother  who  lived  with  them 
was  cross  or  impatient,  just  resting  her  heart  in 
the  thought  of  the  Heavenly  Father  being  there 
with  her  and  sympathising  with  her  —  why,  they 
did  not  feel  like  that,  or  think  of  it  as  the  thing 
to  feel.  And  that  was  what  Jesus  did  feel,  and 
wanted  all  men  to  feel,  and  what  he  preached  in 
his  gospel,  or  '*  good  news,"  and  tried  to  draw 
men  to  him  to  shew  them,  and  to  make  them  see 
it  and  feel  it,  as  he  did.  For  he  could  not  help 
feeling  that  if  he  only  could  get  men  close  to 
him,  and  believing  in  him  so  that  he  could  open 
his  heart  to  them,  they  also  would  see  God  and 
feel  this  Fatherhood  in  everything,  and  in  their 
own  hearts,  even  as  he  did.  That  is  how  that 
word  comes  in  so  closely  to  his  thought,  "  If  ye 
had  known  me  ye  should  have  known  my  Father 
also !  "     It  was  a  word  to  his  disciples,  who  had 


THE    HUMAN    HEART   OF   GOD  II3 

come  to  him,  and  been  with  him,  and  thought 
they  knew  him,  but  yet  had  been  half  bhnded  to 
all  his  deeper  meaning  by  their  thought  —  which 
they  still  kept  clinging  to  —  of  his  going  to  be 
their  King. 

The  Human  Heart  of  God:  As  one  tries  to 
realise  this,  as  what  Christ  wanted  to  teach 
others,  because  he  so  felt  it  himself,  the  thought 
arises  —  How  came  he  to  feel  it  so  ?  Why,  that 
saying  — ''  If  ye  had  known  me,  ye  should  have 
known  my  father  also,"  seems  so  high,  so  above 
what  any  human  being  could  say,  that  some  doubt 
whether  he  ever  did  say  it,  whether  it  was  not 
some  mere  gloss  or  addition  of  the  writer  of  this 
gospel;  or,  if  Jesus  did  say  it,  whether  it  would 
not  tend  to  prove  that  he  felt  himself  God,  as 
after  ages  made  him  out  to  be.  But  in  reality 
there  is  not  a  shadow  of  such  a  meaning  in  it! 
All  through,  he  is  trying  to  direct  men's  thoughts 
to  the  One  Infinite  God  whom  his  people  had 
always  believed  in,  but  whom  they  had  put  so 
far  away;  he  is  trying  to  bring  their  thought  of 
that  Infinite  God  from  the  far-off  inaccessibility 
in  which  they  had  been  thinking  of  Him.  *'  It 
is  He  that  sitteth  upon  the  circle  of  the  earth  and 
the  inhabitants  thereof  are  as  grasshoppers ! " 
That  was  the  kind  of  saying  that  the  Hebrew 
mind  dwelt  upon.     It  was  along  that  line  that 


114  THE   HUMAN    HEART   OF   GOD 

the  Rabbinical  Schools  felt  their  way  towards 
the  Divine.  But  it  was  not  in  the  Rabbinical 
schools  that  Jesus  found  Him.  He  made  out  the 
heart  of  God  from  his  own  heart.  It  was 
knowledge  of  God  at  first  hand.  One  cannot 
help  thinking  that  it  came  first  of  Mary's 
mother-teaching,  that  this  first  opened  the  child 
heart  to  the  great,  almost  forgotten  reality  of 
God's  close  presence,  and  that  so  came  that 
watching  and  waiting  of  the  pure,  open  soul,  to 
which  gradually  were  borne  in  impressions,  dis- 
cernments, impulses,  which  revealed  themselves 
to  him  as  the  working  of  the  Divine  in  him. 
Does  any  one  ask  how  much  was  of  himself  and 
how  much  of  the  spirit  of  God?  Who  can  ever 
say,  in  any  of  the  great  revelations  of  high  truth 
and  holy  presence,  that  have  lighted  up  the  path 
of  man's  uplooking  through  the  ages  with  a  light 
above  man's  own.  But  here  and  there  in  his  ut- 
terances of  this  reciprocal  consciousness,  you 
catch  some  glimpse  of  how  he  felt  it.  ''  Believe 
me  that  I  am  in  the  Father  and  the  Father  in 
me ! "  "  The  words  that  I  speak  unto  you,  I 
speak  not  of  myself,"  and,  highest  of  all :  ''  I 
and  my  father  are  one !  "  In  all  his  best  life  he 
felt  that  Divine  companionship,  that  it  was  not 
just  he  himself  thinking  and  feeling,  but  he  and 
God,  thinking,  feeling,  together  —  and  especially 


THE    HUMAN    HEART   OF   GOD  II5 

tne  very  highest  thought,  the  very  tenderest  feel- 
ing, that  in  which  he  most  seemed  Hfted  out  of 
self  and  above  self  —  that,  God's.  Certainly  it 
was  a  very  exalted  feeling  —  and  it  is  not  strange 
that  those  who  had  not  come  anywhere  near  this 
feeling  misunderstood  him.  I  do  not  wonder 
that  the  sharp  rabbinical  critics  of  Jerusalem  — 
steeped  to  the  eyes  in  technicalities  and  formal- 
ism —  when  they  heard  him  talk  that  way,  cried 
out  that  he  was  *'  blaspheming "  and  "  making 
himself  out  to  be  God !  "  I  do  not  wonder  that 
the  most  even  of  his  disciples  retained  very  little 
of  that  side  of  his  teaching  (of  his  close  life  with 
God)  in  their  remembrance;  and  that  even  John, 
who  had  the  tenderest  sympathy  with  that  deep- 
est side  of  Christ,  and  remembered  most  of  it, 
did  not  always  remember  it  quite  clearly,  and 
still  further  failed  to  transmit  it  clearly  to  his 
followers;  so  that  in  these  gathered  recollections 
of  his  teachings  which  give  us  John's  teaching 
of  the  Gospel,  there  are  dark  and  perplexing 
sayings,  as  well  as  these  exceedingly  bright  ones. 
And  so  again,  I  do  not  wonder  that  at  a  still 
later  time  when  Christian  faith  had  cooled  down, 
quite  away  from  any  living  realisation  of 
Christ's  feeling,  men  said  straight  out  that  he 
must  have  been  God  to  have  spoken  so.  And 
still,  as  I  read  and  read,  I  know  that  all  that 


Il6  THE    HUMAN    HEART   OF   GOD 

Deification  is  a  mistake,  and  a  mistake  that  has 
taken  men  away  from  Christ's  real  thought  and 
feehng,  and  from  the  very  thing  he  was  trying 
to  do.  For  that  thing  he  was  always  trying  to 
do,  was  to  lift  all  men  with  him,  into  the  same 
sense  of  the  Father's  nearness  —  "  He  is  in  you 
also,"  he  said.  "  He  will  be  with  you."  And  as 
clear  as  his  word  of  his  being  one  with  this  in- 
dwelling spirit  of  God,  is  his  great  prayer  that 
his  disciples  also  might  be  One,  in  that  same 
oneness!  And  though  he  never  used  the  ex- 
pression of  "  The  Human  Heart  of  God,"  yet 
the  phrases  that  he  did  use  have  been  so  much 
formalised  and  spoiled  that  this  comes  to  me  as 
about  the  freshest  and  most  living  phrase  for 
that  sense  of  close,  divine  companionship  and 
sympathy  which  Christ  so  felt  and  wanted  all  to 
feel. 

The  Human  Heart  of  God.  Now,  from  try- 
ing to  make  out  that  highest  way  in  which  Christ 
felt  this,  let  us  come  down  to  our  own  poorer 
and  duller  life  and  see  what  help  it  has  for  us. 
Why,  to  begin  with,  it  starts  us  in  our  seeking 
for  God  at  a  nearer,  more  hopeful,  point.  "  Feel- 
ing after  God,  if  haply  we  may  find  him  —  "  I 
suppose  that  is  one  of  the  old  Bible  words  which 
most   come   home   to   our   common   experience. 


THE   HUMAN    HEART   OF   GOD  II7 

We  long  to  know  God  more  closely.  For  we 
know  God  is  —  must  be,  and  if  he  were  not  any- 
thing to  which  we  feel  able  to  give  such  a  per- 
sonal name,  still  there  must  be  some  Divine 
equivalent,  even  if  it  is  only  what  Herbert 
Spencer  calls  the  "  Infinite  energy  that  sustains 
all  things."  But  whatever  it  is,  or  He  is,  how 
we  do  feel  after  it  for  some  clear  touch  or 
thought  or  apprehension  of  that  highest  mystery. 
But  we  are  always  beginning  at  the  wrong  end! 
We  begin  with  the  abstract,  with  vast,  far-away 
thoughts  of  Infinitude,  or  something  as  near 
Infinitude  as  we  can  think.  We  think  of  the 
vast  spaces  of  the  Infinite  Heaven  of  worlds; 
and  consider  if  we  can  fill  them  up  with  some 
conception  of  Being  that  could  have  any  thought 
or  care  for  us  little  insects  of  a  day  on  this  small- 
est of  the  sky's  hinted  worlds.  And  we  cannot 
make  much  of  it  that  way  —  nay,  when  we  think 
out  into  those  vast  infinitudes,  instead  of  finding 
much  help  to  faith  in  God  there,  we  have  to  take 
a  pretty  strong  clear  faith  with  us  there,  or  we 
shall  find  nothing.  Or  again,  we  work  along 
the  thought  of  the  moral  —  which  is  so  much 
grander  than  the  material  —  but  still  we  are  apt 
to  start  from  the  abstract.  We  begin  by  try- 
ing to  imagine  the  Divine  Perfection.  That  is 
where  all  the  great  theologies  into  which  men 


Il8  THE   HUMAN    HEART   OF  GOD 

have  tried  to  systematize  Christianity,  have  be- 
gun. They  have  begun  with  that  far-off,  ab- 
stract perfectness.  God  is  there;  that  is  God; 
and  Man  ought  to  be  there,  and  if  man  is  pal- 
pably not  there,  that  is  man's  own  fault  and  sin, 
explained  this  way  or  that.  That  abstract 
Divine  perfectness  is  the  sort  of  fixed  point,  by 
which,  from  which,  all  things  are  measured,  and 
man  put,  (in  his  own  thinking)  almost  hope- 
lessly away  from  God. 

It  is  true  that  these  same  Theologies,  having 
thus  started  their  systems  with  Man  infinitely 
far  away  from  God,  have  then  proceeded  to 
elaborate  certain  complicated  systems  for  bring- 
ing him  near  again;  and  in  all  those  systems 
Christ  is  brought  in,  as  somehow  bringing  these 
two  infinitely  separated  things  (God  and  Man) 
together,  on  certain  conditions,  always,  —  of 
faith,  or  works,  or  by  a  certain  sacramental  pro- 
cess duly  gone  through.  But  all  these  things 
seem  to  me  to  miss  the  great  essential  thought  of 
the  heart  of  Christ.  That  thought  is,  through- 
out, of  God's  present  love  —  God  near  to  all  — 
loving  all  —  not  just  going  to  love  them  when 
they  have  been  converted  or  changed  and 
brought,  somehow,  near  to  Him,  but  loving  them 
now,  the  sinner,  the  outcast,  man  even  in  the 
most  elementary  stage,  even  in  his  lowest  sav- 


THE    HUMAN    HEART    OF    GOD  II9 

agism  even  in  his  furthest  lapses  into  sin.  Yes 
—  God  not  loving  sin  —  but  understanding  sin, 
not  averted  by  it,  pitying  it,  patient  with  it.  The 
human  heart  of  God.  Yes  —  anything  is  better 
than  that  abstract  thought  of  the  Divine  Heart 
(of  the  theologian)  in  its  passionless  perfection, 
turned  all  away  from  the  common  world's  poor 
worldly  living,  and  only  in  any  close  communion 
with  pure  souls  in  their  most  elevated  moods. 
Nay,  I  would  sooner  follow  the  common  human 
heart  in  all  the  familiar  working  of  its  interests, 
admirations  and  affections.  They  may  seem 
small  enough  as  they  come  out  in  any  single  life 
with  its  poor  little  limitations,  and  yet  they  may 
touch  us  with  glimpses  of  a  sort  of  divine  meaning 
and  suggestions  of  infinite  possibilities.  Here  is 
a  poor  woman,  "  fussing  among  her  plants  "  as 
her  neighbours  and  children  say — loving  them, 
loving  them  like  little  children,  putting  this  one 
in  more  sunshine,  that  into  the  shade,  washing 
off  the  blight  and  scale,  watching  each  new  bud  — 
such  hope  and  such  sorrow  w^hen  the  bud  does 
not  come  to  a  good  flower  but  seems  somehow  to 
dry  up  and  wither.  That  woman,  with  her  lov- 
ing care  for  this  infinitesimal  fraction  of  the 
mighty  world,  is  but  a  very  small  item  in  the 
forces  which  are  the  outcome  of  the  infinite  sus- 
taining energy  that  we  call  "  God."     Yet,  as  I 


120  THE   HUMAN    HEART   OF   GOD 

follow  this  thought  of  the  Human  Heart  of  God, 
I  seem  to  get  a  new  glimpse  of  what  all  the 
mighty  evolution  of  things  means.  Mr.  R.  A. 
Armstrong,  in  his  book  ''  God  and  the  Soul  "  (to 
my  mind  one  of  the  best  and  most  helpful  books 
of  the  day)  gives  us  as  a  phrase  for  the  omni- 
present life  of  God  in  the  world,  this :  "  Atten- 
tion concentrated  everywhere."  Only  let  us  add 
to  this  ^'  Love."  ''  Loving  attention."  You  know, 
so  long  as  you  have  to  conceive  of  one  '^  infinite 
sustaining  energy  "  in  and  through  all  things,  it 
is  no  harder  really  to  conceive  of  that  "  Infinite 
energy,"  that  cosmic  force,  as  love,  also;  it  is 
only  beginning  at  the  human  end  of  the  vast 
force  and  having  the  courage  of  the  thought.  Be- 
gin, as  I  have  said — not  with  the  gravitation  (of 
which  we  really  know  nothing)  with  which  the 
Infinite  Energy  works  among,  the  vasts  of  space, 
but  with  the  loving  care  of  a  woman  among  her 
flowers.  She  and  her  flowers  of  which  we  know 
a  good  deal,  are  just  as  much  outcomes  of  that 
Infinite  Divine  energy,  as  gravitation  is — of 
which  we  know  nothing.  But  begin  here  and 
even  that  little  sense  of  human  care  and  love  en- 
larges into  a  sweet  companion  thought  of  Divine 
love  and  care,  the  shadow  of  a  sweet  presence. 
And  when  with  that  sweet  companion  thought 
and  presence,  you  go  among  all  the  variety  of 


THE    HUMAN    HEART   OF   GOD  121 

human  doings,  I  do  not  say  it  makes  all  plain,  but 
here  and  there  it  touches  things  with  little  lights 
of  interpretation  which  seem  to  come  out  of  the 
meaning  of  the  whole,  which  shew  me  the  trend 
of  the  whole,  and  which  help  me  to  trust  even 
where  I  cannot  see.  I  see  a  true  teacher  among 
his  boys,  true  parents  among  their  children,  try- 
ing harder  than  ever  that  woman  works  among 
her  plants  to  train  them  up  into  good,  happy, 
wholesome  childhood,  and  so  still  on  into  good, 
wholesome,  manhood  and  womanhood.  Of 
course  it  is  not  a  perfect  trying  anywhere  and  the 
results  are  just  as  imperfect,  often  dreadfully  dis- 
appointing. The  children  don't  grow  straight, 
the  men  and  women  come  up  into  poor  stunted 
half  lives  —  but  all  the  process  and  all  our  disap- 
pointment at  the  poor  result  points  to  something 
higher ;  and  all  our  sense  of  impotence  and  failure 
does  not  excuse  itself  but  finds  a  certain  rest  in 
the  thought  of  the  human  heart  of  God ! 

And  so  it  may  be,  too,  when  it  is  we  ourselves 
who  are  the  failures.  I  think  the  most  pathetic 
thing  in  all  this  complicated  Universe  is  its  moral 
struggle.  We  conceive  such  high  ideals  and  we 
fall  in  actual  living  so  pitifully  below  them.  Here 
is  a  man  with,  as  Burns  wrote  of  himself  ''pas- 
sions wild  and  strong."  Perhaps  he  has  many 
noble  thoughts  of  life,  but  he  yields  to  the  tempta- 


122  THE    HUMAN    HEART   OF   GOD 

tions;  then  he  is  ashamed  and  despondent.  In 
that  shame  he  feels  as  if  God  could  have  no  joy 
in  him,  no  love  for  him,  could  only  regard  him  as 
a  hypocrite  and  resent  any  thanksgiving  and 
prayers  from  him  as  lies  and  insults.  It  may  not 
be  so  bad  with  you,  but  we  all  know  something  of 
what  it  is.  For  an  outburst  of  angry  temper  or 
one  mean  piece  of  selfishness,  may  sweep  av/ay 
all  our  piety  and  make  us  ashamed  of  the  good  we 
have  thought  of  but  have  let  go.  We  feel  afraid 
to  look  into  the  face  of  God — what  is  that  perfect 
holiness  to  us  ?  We  are  afraid  to  worship,  afraid 
to  think  of  him  as  near  us.  But  when  this 
thought  comes  to  me  of  the  Human  Heart  of 
God,  I  do  not  feel  that  it  makes  any  wrong  do- 
ing less,  but  it  does  help  me  still  to  cling  to  God, 
and  not  utterly  to  despair.  One  hesitates  perhaps 
to  think  much  about  it  for  oneself,  for  fear  of 
seeming  to  excuse  oneself,  but  for  all  the  poor 
weak  sinning  of  the  world  it  comes  as  such  a 
light  and  help.  Why  are  we  to  be  impatient  or 
despairing  because  people  are  only  at  the  poor 
beginnings  of  that  ideal  goodness  towards  which 
God  is  leading  on  His  world  ?  The  world  is  only 
at  the  beginning  of  it!  Even  the  best,  most  ad- 
vanced part  of  the  world,  is  only  at  the  beginning 
of  the  real  highest  life,  as  we  see  it  shadowed 
forth  to  us  in  the  noblest.    And  down  among  the 


THE    HUMAN    HEART   OF   GOD  I23 

least  advanced,  the  lowest  races  of  the  world,  we 
can  but  grope  about  with  our  thoughts  of  evolu- 
tion and  a  dim  sense  of  the  measureless  ages 
through  which  we  have  been  brought  even  to 
where  we  are.  But  surely  it  has  been  a  power 
v/orking  towards  good,  and  meaning  the  good, 
that  has  been  leading  all  on,  and  is  leading  all 
on  still  to  heights  far  above  our  noblest  actual,  in 
which  Christ  lives,  in  the  very  heart  of  the  Eter- 
nal ;  interpreting  that  heart  of  God  to  the  heart  of 
man,  in  Love.  That  is  why  Christianity  lays  such 
supreme  stress  on  love.  True,  it  puts  righteous- 
ness in  all  sorts  of  flashing  lights  of  meaning 
and  attractiveness,  and  sometimes  of  awe  and  fear 
lest  we  should  lose  it — but  over  all  love,  for  love 
is  the  power  that  really  lifts  man  up,  making  some 
finer  greatness  than  he  has,  beautiful  and  ad- 
mirable to  him,  so  that  he  longs  for  it  and  is 
stirred  by  it  to  loyalty,  imitation,  self  surrender. 
And  so,  through  the  human  heart  of  man,  climb- 
ing a  little  toward  higher  things  through  the  long 
dim  past,  and  through  that  highest  human  heart 
which  Christ  has  shewn  us  in  himself  and  in  our 
best  self,  through  all  this  we  get  some  sense  of 
the  Human  Heart  of  God.  And  when  once  we 
have  got  this  thought  and  clasped  it  to  us,  —  I 
do  not  say  it  makes  all  things  plain,  but  it  does 
touch  with  some  new  lights  of  meaning  and  trust, 


124  THE   HUMAN    HEART   OF   GOD 

alike  the  long,  dim  past,  and  the  confused  and 
tangled  present  —  and  the  vast,  vague  eternity 
beyond.  And  here,  in  this  little  fragment  of  the 
whole,  where  we  are  struggling  on,  to-day,  it 
helps  us  to  rest  in  God  a  little  more  confidently, 
and  even  through  all  shame  of  weakness  and  fail- 
ure and  sin,  to  know  that  we  are  still  in  His  heart 
of  meaning,  and  that  nothing  can  separate  us 
from  the  Love  of  God. 


THE  FOREORDINATION  OF  GOD 

There  is  a  truth  in  these  words  which  is  too 
much  left  out  in  our  modern  religious  thinking, 
and  to  which  I  want  to  draw  your  attention. 
''  Foreknowledge/'  "  Foreordination,"  ''  Predes- 
tination,"— they  all  refer  essentially  to  the  same 
thought,  and  it  is  a  thought  which  the  Liberalism 
of  to-day  rather  shrinks  from.  This  is  the  day  of 
self-reliance.  Man's  nature  and  power  are  mag- 
nified more  than  ever  before.  And  yet,  when 
this  exuberant  feeling  of  freedom  has  done  its 
most  and  its  best,  man  finds  himself  constantly 
confronted,  stopped  by  facts,  tendencies,  forces 
against  which  he  is  powerless,  and  which  if  this 
universe  is  a  universe  of  orderly  meaning,  mean 
another  larger  will  than  ours.  In  man's  religious 
thinking  he  has  called  this  "  the  foreordination  of 
God  " — I  like  that  word  for  it  best.  It  is  a  deep 
subject,  touching  on  one  side  the  highest  ques- 
tions of  metaphysics  and  philosophy ;  and  as  such 
it  might  seem  beyond  the  scope  of  our  considera- 
tion here.  But  then,  it  is  a  subject  which  on  the 
hither-side  touches  every  alternative  of  our  daily 

125 


120  THE  FOREORDI NATION  OF  GOD 

living,  our  thoughts  of  duty,  our  struggles  after 
righteousness,  everything  on  which  moral  life  de- 
pends, and  so  we  have  to  have  some  thought  about 
it ;  and  it  may  be  helpful  to  see  some  of  the  great 
thoughts  of  men  about  it,  and  especially  to  see 
what  were  the  real  thoughts  of  the  Gospel  men 
and  times. 

Perhaps  in  the  forefront  of  the  world's 
thought  on  the  subject  of  God's  foreordination 
stands  Calvinism.  Calvinism  was  based  entirely 
on  God's  foreordination,  and  carried  out  the 
thought  with  a  rigid  and  remorseless  literalism, 
as  if  foreordination,  was  the  whole  truth,  and  the 
one  absolute  equation  of  man's  life  and  destiny. 
It  did  not  do  so  at  the  beginning.  It  is  often  for- 
gotten what  a  noble  rebound  of  real  faith  Cal- 
vinism was  in  its  beginning.  You  see,  in  the  mid- 
dle ages.  Religion  had  more  and  more  come  to  be 
summed  up  in  Purgatory.  The  popular  religion 
of  the  middle  ages  concentrated  its  real  force  and 
interest  on  Heaven,  and  Hell,  and  especially  on 
Purgatory.  You  see  the  intensity  of  its  interest, 
in  Art,  Literature ;  the  pictures  of  Judgment,  the 
Epics  of  Dante,  Purgatory  occupied  the  whole 
horizon  of  thought.  The  Reformation  tore  all 
that  away;  all  that  higgling  of  Priests  about  in- 
dulgences, all  that  apparatus  of  masses  and 
prayers  for  the  dead.     The  Reformation  tore  all 


THE  FOREOEIDI NATION  OF  GOD  127 

that  away,  and  threw  men  back  on — what?  On 
the  foreordination  of  God!  God  has  settled  all 
that  beforehand — in  the  mighty  sweep  of  his 
world-plan.  He  hasn't  left  it  to  be  bargained  over 
by  the  priest's  masses  or  Tetzel's  indulgences.  It 
is  all  settled — if  for  Heaven,  then  "  Glory  be  to 
God  " ;  if  for  Hell,  still  not  ours  to  dispute  it, 
"  Glory  be  to  God." 

Leave  all  that  eternal  future  in  God's  settlement 
of  it,  and,  now,  go  to  work,  here  in  this  present 
world,  where  God  is  calling  us  to  do  His  present 
will,  and  to  set  up  His  present  kingdom!  That 
was  the  spirit  of  the  first  Calvinism ;  and  what  a 
deliverance  it  was  to  feel  that  all  that  eternal 
future  was  out  of  their  hand  or  care,  history 
shows.  Probably  nothing  could  have  done  away 
with  all  that  peddling  and  fussing  about  the  fu- 
ture, except  that  strong,  simple  truth,  even  so  im- 
perfectly conceived  as  it  was,  of  the  Foreordina- 
tion of  God.  And  if  men  had  left  it  there,  simply 
as  a  great  rock  of  trust  in  the  background  of 
their  thought,  it  would  have  been  well.  But  they 
could  not  leave  it  there.  By  and  bye  theorizing 
began,  and  the  wire-drawing  of  logic.  All  souls 
foreordained  to  Heaven  or  Hell  before  they  were 
born?  The  moment  men  began  to  look  closely 
into  that,  all  sorts  of  difficulties  arose.  What  of 
infants,  dying  before  they  were  old  enough  to 


128  THE  FOREORDINATION  OF  GOD 

have  done  either  right,  or  wrong,  it  seemed  as 
if  foreordination  must  involve  Infants  being  in 
Hell !  Then,  in  another  direction ;  if  all  that  eter- 
nal future  is  settled  by  Divine  decree  irrespective 
of  life  or  character,  what  can  it  matter  whether 
one's  life  be  good  or  bad,  and  foreordination,  car- 
ried to  that  extreme,  landed  men  in  the  moral 
chaos  of  Antinomianism. 

Well,  Calvinism  had  its  day,  a  strong  day,  dur- 
ing the  fighting  and  struggling  time  of  the  Refor- 
mation ;  for  it  was  a  grim  time,  and  it  needed  an 
iron  creed  to  carry  men  through;  but  when  it 
came  to  a  religion  simply  for  common  living,  it 
would  not  do.  It  had  been  clamped  and  bolted  to- 
gether, well,  with  numberless  texts,  but  the  nat- 
ural heart  and  conscience  were  too  strong  for  it. 
Men  could  not  believe  in  a  God — sending 

"  Ane  to  Heaven  and  ten  to  Hell 

"A'  for  thy  glory, 
"  And  nae  for  ony  guid  or  ill 

"  They've  done  afore  ye." 

All  sorts  of  schemes,  of  semi-Calvinism  and  so 
forth  were  attempted,  but  finally  it  has  practically 
disappeared;  only  the  trouble  is  that  it  has  left 
behind  it  a  prejudice  against  the  whole  thought 
of  foreordination,  whereas,  as  I  have  said,  that  is 
a  truth  based  in  the  very  reality  of  things  and  not 


THE  FOREORDINATION  OF  GOD  1 29 

to  be  let  go  without  loss  and  harm  to  all  true  relig- 
ious life. 

The  trouble  with  Calvinism's  setting  forth  of 
foreordination  was  that  it  took  it  as  if  it  were 
the  whole  of  truth,  and  worked  from  it  with  the 
rigid  literalism  which  has  exaggerated  and  de- 
faced so  many  of  the  Bible  words. 

In  reality  one  great  thought  runs  through  the 
Bible,  through  the  w^hole  of  the  old  Hebrew  his- 
tory— not  equally  felt  at  all  times  or  by  all,  but 
aways  coming  up  again — and  illuminating  their 
whole  history.  That  thought  was,  of  a  great 
purpose  of  God,  to  be  worked  out  in  men,  and 
to  be  worked  out  by  them.  Yes,  "  by  "  them — 
always  the  thought  of  their  part  went  along  with 
the  greater  dominating  thought  of  God's  pur- 
pose. Their  part  might  fail.  "  Who  hath  be- 
lieved our  report?"  cried  the  greatest  of  their 
prophets.  They  might  be  unfaithful  to  God's 
trust,  then  would  it  be  given  to  others  to  fulfil; 
but  fulfilled  it  would  surely  be !  This  was  ''  Fore- 
ordination "  as  it  grew  up  in  the  mind  of  Israel, 
nothing  to  do  with  man's  eternal  personal  des- 
tiny, to  which  Calvinism  especially  applied  it, 
but  the  thought  of  a  great  Divine  plan  and  pur- 
pose running  through  the  ages.  And  when  you 
come  to  the  development  of  it,  in  the  thought  of 
Christ  and  Paul  and  the  early  Christians,  you  see 


130  THE  FOREORDINATION  OF  GOD 

at  once  what  a  tremendous  strength  it  gave  them. 
Their  whole  work  was  done  in  the  great  sense, 
that  they  were  not  the  mere  opportunists  of  a  new 
religious  movement,  but  the  agents  of  God's 
providence,  carrying  on  a  work  which  had  been 
in  the  eternal  mind  from  the  beginning  of  the 
world ! 

You  see  this  in  Christ  himself.  We  are  not 
to  think  of  him  as  of  some  casual  reformer,  who 
saw  formalism  and  ceremonialism  lording  it  over 
the  people  and  who  rose  up  to  denounce  them. 
The  thought  of  the  great  work  his  people  might 
be  doing  for  the  truth  of  God  possessed  his  soul. 
"Ye  are  the  light  of  the  world,"  he  said!  In- 
stead, they  were  hiding  it  under  a  bushel;  it 
was  upon  his  soul  to  lift  it  up,  to  inspire  his 
people  with  the  ancient  thought  of  the  glory  of  it, 
and  to  lead  them  into  a  new  life  of  showing  it 
to  the  world!  The  Jews  upbraided  him  as  an 
upstart,  an  ignorant,  unauthorised  Galilean  set- 
ting his  word  against  all  their  ancient  law  and 
way.  ''  The  word  that  I  speak  unto  you,  I  speak 
not  of  myself !  "  was  his  reply.  They  quoted 
Abraham.  "  Abraham  saw  my  day  and  was 
glad"  —  the  ''teaching  of  Abraham  carried  in 
its  heart  this  Gospel  I  am  giving  you."  They 
mocked.  ''  Thou  art  not  yet  fifty  years  old, 
and  hast  thou  seen  Abraham?"     But  he  was 


THE  FOREORDINATION  OF  GOD  I3I 

speaking  not  of  personal  things  but  of  that  great 
movement  of  pure  religion  of  which  he  saw  the 
beginning  in  Abraham,  and  felt  the  later  inspira- 
tion in  himself  —  and  all,  Abraham,  and  He, 
alike  the  agents  of  that  great  foreordination. 
''  Before  Abraham  was,  I  am  "  was  his  great 
word.  People  have  taken  that  —  the  Jews 
took  it  —  as  an  assertion  of  personal  pre- 
existence,  but  that  was  only  a  clumsy  low- 
ering of  his  thought.  He  was  plainly  speak- 
ing of  this  great  claim  of  the  divine  ed- 
ucation of  the  world,  and  asserting  his  own 
place  as  a  link  in  it,  and  all  in  the  mind  of 
God  from  the  beginning.  That  is  the  thought 
he  loved  to  fall  back  upon  —  that  was  what  he 
meant  by  his  ''  Messiahship,"  that  he  was  fulfill- 
ing a  great  purpose  of  God  which  was  from  the 
foundation  of  the  world.  That  was  his  strength 
and  glory.  That  is  what  he  prayed  might  more 
and  more  appear.  "  Now,  O  Father,  glorify  me 
with  that  glory  which  was  before  the  worlds !  " 
It  was  no  cheap,  personal  ambition,  but  his  con- 
fident prayer  for  the  outshining  of  that  divine 
light  and  truth  which  at  the  moment  seemed 
to  be  rejected  and  despised. 

That  this  was  the  meaning  in  the  Master's 
heart  we  are  confirmed  in  feeling,  by  seeing 
how  the  Apostles  took  it  in,  and  dwelt  on  it,  as 


132  THE  FOREORDI NATION  OF  GOD 

one  of  the  most  uplifting  thoughts  of  their  own 
ministry.  For  the  same  obloquy  which  assailed 
their  master  assailed  them  still  more.  Who  were 
they,  ignorant  upstarts  contradicting  the  ancient 
things,  and  preaching  a  Christ  whose  claim  had 
been  manifestly  disallowed  by  God,  disproved 
by  the  shameful  ending  of  the  cross?  Realise 
that,  and  then  you  will  understand  the  strength 
they  found  in  falling  back  upon  the  foreordina- 
tion  of  God,  and  how  this  grew  into  one  of  the 
great  stock  thoughts  of  their  preaching.  They 
were  nothing  in  themselves,  but  in  Christ  they 
were  part  of  God's  meaning  and  purpose  from 
the  foundation  of  the  world.  They  were  not  dis- 
couraged by  the  crucifixion.  If  the  Jews  "  by 
wicked  hands  "  had  crucified  him,  it  was  "  by 
the  determinate  counsel  and  foreknowledge  of 
God "  that  he  had  been  ''  delivered  up."  He 
was  ''  the  lamb  that  was  slain  from  the  founda- 
tion of  the  world  " ;  that  saying  alone  should  be 
enough  to  take  away  any  idea  of  personal  pre- 
existence  from  these  allusions,  the  whole  thought 
was,  of  all  as  in  the  mind  of  God,  from  the 
beginning. 

This  great  thought  lifted  them  above  all  fail- 
ure. And  so  they  used  it  to  overcome  the  dis- 
trust, the  fears,  the  weakness  of  their  followers. 
"  God  hath  chosen  us  in  him,  before  the  founda- 


THE  FOREORDINATION  OF  GOD  1 33 

tion  of  the  world,  having  predestined  us  by  the 
adoption  of  children." 

Hence  the  tone  of  glad  assurance  and  encour- 
agement that  rings  through  those  early  Chris- 
tian writings.  "  Ye  are  the  elect  of  God !  "  "  God 
hath  called  you  " ;  "  he  hath  predestined  you,'* 
to  this  new  life  in  Christ!  Think  with  what 
force  and  help  such  words  would  come  to  those 
poor  labourers  in  Rome  or  Corinth  —  water- 
carriers  and  quarry-men,  and  humblest  folk,  who 
before  had  lived  on  from  day  to  day  with  no 
thought  that  any  God  in  Heaven  or  Earth  cared 
for  them,  or  wanted  them.  "  God  wants  you !  " 
He  wants  even  you  to  help  Him  in  this  mighty 
world-plan  for  the  salvation  of  mankind  —  and 
not  them  alone,  so  God  wanted  all  men,  called 
all  men!  Grand  words  of  assurance  and  en- 
couragement, and  always  leaving  place  for  per- 
sonal effort,  but  personal  effort  based  upon  the 
sense  of  a  great  divine  impulse  and  leading,  which 
foreordains  the  good,  and  asks  for  our  help,  but 
w^ill  surely  fulfill,  even  if  we  fail  or  turn  aside. 

There  is  the  great  difference  between  Fore- 
ordination  as  a  doctrine  in  Calvinism,  and  fore- 
ordination  as  a  great  assurance  of  Faith,  in  the 
New  Testament.  Calvinism  took  these  great 
assurances  of  Faith  and  treated  them  as  so  many 
exact  propositions  of  theological  science,  and  then 


134  THE  FOREORDINATION  OF  GOD 

with  the  rigid  literalism  which  has  spoiled  so 
many  of  the  grand  old  Bible  sayings,  it  worked 
them  up  into  a  categorical  system  of  everything 
being  exactly  and  unchangingly  foreseen  for  all 
eternity.  No  room  for  possibility  of  change,  no 
room  for  man's  free  action.  But  in  reahty,  the 
old  Bible  words  which  thus  were  treated  as  ex- 
act theological  propositions,  were  nothing  of  the 
kind!  Paul  was  not  writing  theology,  or  shap- 
ing out  systems.  He  was  writing  strengthening 
letters  to  weak  men  and  women,  just  assuring 
them  that  God  had  need  of  them,  wanted  even 
their  help  and  witness  in  His  mighty  plan;  and 
really  in  his  strongest  utterances  of  Divine  plan 
and  will,  appealing  for  man's  help  to  be  given 
freely. 

It  is  that  old  truth  of  Foreordination,  not  as 
Calvinism  disfigured  and  narrowed  it,  but  as  it 
lay  as  a  great  faith  in  the  heart  of  Christ  and 
Paul  and  that  earliest  Christian  time;  it  is  that 
old  truth  of  a  Divine  purpose  and  power  in  the 
world  leading  things  on,  that  we  want  to  bring 
back  a  little  more  into  our  religious  faith.  We 
are  still  too  apt  to  feel  as  if  we,  and  all  the  works 
and  institutions  of  the  world,  were  mere  casual 
incidents  in  a  vast  order  of  things  —  sometimes 
it  almost  looks  to  us  like  a  vast  disorder  —  in 
which  we  have  to  do  the  best  we  can,  now  for 


THE  FOREORDINATION  OF  GOD  I35 

each  other,  or  for  some  seeming  good  of  the 
whole.  Yet  our  very  science,  our  study  of  out- 
ward nature,  might  teach  us  better.  No  lack 
of  a  long,  slowly  working  order  there !  I  think  it 
was  Huxley  who  used  to  say  "  there  is  a  great 
deal  of  Calvinism  in  nature."  Through  what 
seems,  looked  at  in  detail,  infinite  variety,  con- 
fusion sometimes  almost  to  caprice,  we  get  con- 
tinual glimpses  of  a  vast  world-order,  slowly, 
remorselessly  working  itself  out.  Nay,  not 
**  working  itself "  out.  If  it  were  simply  one 
continually  repeated  grind,  the  same  order  over 
and  over  again,  then  it  might  conceivably  be  that 

—  but  a  vast  world-order  that  has  constant  prog- 
ress in  it,  from  fire  mist  to  circling  spheres,  from 
circling  spheres  to  worlds  —  one  of  them  at  least, 
grassing  over,  developing  life  —  life  still  in  or- 
derly, upward  progress,  from  monad  up  to  man 

—  from  man  in  the  mere  bones  and  muscle  and 
passion  of  the  savage,  to  man  in  the  brain  and 
conscience  and  heart  of  the  sage  or  Saint?  Is 
there  no  foreordination  there?  Is  all  this  won- 
derful creation  something  that  has  taken  this 
form,  or  that,  haphazard,  and  at  last  stumbled 
into  man  ?  And  then,  onward  still,  stumbled  into 
human  progress,  and  into  the  great  personalities 
of  history?  Did  not  the  Almighty  mind  mean 
"  man  "  from  the  beginning  ?     Is  it  not  Fore- 


136  THE  FOREORDINATION  OF  GOD 

ordination  all  along  the  line  of  evolution  ?  Is  not 
evolution  indeed,  merely  the  scientific  name  for 
that  great  Foreordination ?  ''Thou  lovedst  me 
from  the  foundation  of  the  world,"  said  Christ 
in  his  prayer,  and  it  has  seemed  to  men  an  aw- 
ful word  to  have  said,  but  is  it  not  really  true 
of  every  son  of  man?  In  that  great  plan  for  the 
leading  on  of  man  towards  truth,  towards  good- 
ness, towards  all  nobler  life,  does  not  God  love 
his  Christ's  only?  Is  not  every  soul  that  shares 
their  service,  called  to  it,  and  dear  to  the  Infinite 
heart?  And  what  a  strength  is  in  that  thought 
for  all  who  dare  to  share,  however  humbly,  in 
doing  any  little  work  that  may  make  the  world 
a  better,  happier  place!  Look  at  it  how  you 
will,  the  thought  is  an  uplifting  one.  The  poet's 
dream  of  ''  One  far  off  divine  event,  to  which 
the  whole  creation  moves  "  —  nay,  it  is  not  a 
mere  dream,  say  rather  a  vision  of  the  uplifted 
soul ! 

Of  course  one  cannot  outline  it  all  exactly  and 
say,  in  all  the  busy  turmoil  of  our  doings,  how 
much  is  the  foreordination  of  God,  and  how  much 
the  contribution  of  man's  free  will,  or  how  (if 
God  has  foreordained  anything)  man  can  really 
have  any  free  part.  And  man  can  go  on  puzzling, 
indeed  men  have  done  ever  since  they  began  to 
think  of  such  things  at  all,  puzzling  themselves 


THE  FOREORDINATION  OF  GOD  1 37 

to  reconcile  the  two  —  God's  foreknowledge,  and 
man's  freedom.  Perhaps  man's  logic  never  will 
reconcile  the  two,  but  man's  life  has  to  reconcile 
them  every  day;  and  all  good,  earnest  life,  living 
to  any  large  thought  of  duty,  and  trying  to  be 
on  the  side  of  the  world's  forces  of  good,  loses  all 
difficulty  —  works  not  as  one  bound  or  fettered, 
but  with  a  gladder  and  more  eager  freedom  be- 
cause feeling  that  the  world's  forces  of  good, 
are  foreordained  of  God,  and  foreordained  to 
conquer  in  the  end.  I  remember  James  Freeman 
Clarke  speaking  of  how  this  came  to  those  who 
like  himself  had  struggled  (through  the  great 
Civil  War  in  America)  to  lift  that  war  above 
mere  politics  and  keep  it  true  to  its  greater  issues 
of  freedom.  He  said  that  for  long,  they  seemed 
to  be  struggling  alone,  all  in  confusion,  but  as 
the  end  drew  on,  the  greater  meanings  seemed 
to  clear  themselves  —  and  when  the  great  events 
came,  one  by  one,  the  abolition  of  slavery,  the 
Fall  of  Richmond,  the  close  of  the  war  —  he  said 
—  they  felt  as  if  these  were  not  their  doing,  but 
"  came  like  things  foreordained  from  the  founda- 
tion of  the  world." 

No!  Once  more,  it  is  not  a  doctrine  I  am 
arguing  to  prove;  but,  that  we  take  in,  a  little 
more,  into  our  hearts  and  lives  the  thought  of 
the   Divine   meanings,    working   themselves   out 


138  THE  FOREORDINATION  OF  GOD 

in  human  history,  and  the  divine  meanings  that 
are  always  in  the  world,  mutely  appealing  to  us 
all  to  take  hold  and  keep  them  on!  Not  ours 
perhaps  to  see  exactly  what  the  end  shall  be  — 
not  ours  at  all  to  see  the  final  victory  —  but  ours 
to  press  on  in  the  direction  of  the  light,  doing 
all  helpfulness  and  kindness  as  we  march  along, 
and  feeling  that  the  ways  of  God  though  slow 
are  sure,  sure  from  the  foundation  of  the  world, 
sure  into  the  far  recesses  of  eternity. 


THE  HEALING  FORCES  OF  GOD 

The  healing  forces  in  Nature,  and  especially 
the  quiet  way  in  which  they  seem  to  work ;  — 
that  is  the  thought  suggested  to  me  by  the  old 
gospel  story  —  of  the  poor  infirm  man  healed 
at  the  Pool  of  Bethesda  and  not  knowing  who 
had  healed  him.  Destruction  is  often  sudden 
enough  both  in  nature  and  in  human  history, 
but  healing  and  restoration  so  often  work  quietly 
and  silently.  I  do  not  give  it  as  any  new  idea, 
but  it  is  one  of  those  old  thoughts  which  is  well 
worth  following  out  a  little,  not  only  as  a  curious 
matter  of  observation  —  but  as  a  thought  with 
help  and  truth  in  it,  a  thought  to  bring  us  nearer 
to  the  Infinite  Life  that  works  in  this  beautiful 
silent  way,  —  and  also  to  help  us  to  do  our  part, 
and  to  be  content  to  do  it,  more  in  the  same 
quiet  way. 

Look  at  the  healing  work  in  Nature.  The  lower 
down  you  begin,  the  more  visibly  striking  it 
is.  In  the  very  lowest  forms  of  life  you  often  see 
them  seemingly  destroyed  in  some  essential,  but 
nature  grows  on  a  new  part,  and  quietly  makes 

139 


140  THE    HEALING   FORCES   OF   GOD 

them  right  again.  Here  and  there  you  pick  up 
a  star-fish  on  the  sand,  that  has  thus  had  one  of 
its  tentacles  broken  off  and  grown  again.  Watch 
the  boat-man  going  his  round  among  his  lobster- 
pots  and  here  and  there  it  is  a  lobster  or  a  crab 
that  has  thus  lost  a  claw,  and  had  it  restored  — 
a  little  smaller  than  the  original  one,  but  still 
a  serviceable  limb.  You  break  a  twig,  or  even 
a  bough,  off  a  tree ;  and  something  begins  silently 
to  heal  the  scar,  and  in  doing  so  to  make  up 
for  the  loss  by  some  new  growth  all  about.  You 
cannot  actually  see  those  quiet  restorative  pro- 
cesses by  which  Nature  thus  begins  to  make  all 
right  again.  You  may  watch,  but  it  is  like  a 
child  watching  the  hour-hand  of  the  clock,  or 
the  shadow  of  the  sun  —  it  gets  from  point  to 
point,  but  you  cannot  see  the  movement.  You  can 
see  the  lightning-flash  —  but  you  can  not  see 
the  electricity  accumulating.  So  on  a  larger  scale. 
You  wound  the  green  surface  of  the  earth  with 
spade  or  plough;  you  pile  the  fiery  slag-heaps 
from  the  furnace  upon  the  fields,  or  disfigure 
the  valley  side  with  the  great  bare  cutting  or 
embankment  of  your  railroad.  Quietly,  silently, 
the  healing  forces  of  God  go  to  work  to  make 
all  right  again.  The  winds  are  His  messengers. 
The  birds  carry  seeds  for  Him.  The  very  earth 
worms  do  their  humble  service.    In  a  little  while. 


THE    HEALING   FORCES   OF   GOD  I4I 

the  raw  furrows  show  a  sheen  of  vegetation; 
the  scarpment  of  the  railroad  is  grassing  over; 
the  very  slag-heaps  shew  here  and  there  a  weed, 
and  by  and  by  whole  patches  of  greenery.  It 
makes  one  feel  as  if  the  whole  atmosphere  must 
be  full  of  spores  and  seeds,  waiting  for  any  place 
where  they  may  find  the  chance  to  grow.  You 
call  them  weeds  perhaps,  though,  bear  in  mind, 
the  more  you  know  of  them,  the  less  inclined 
you  will  be  to  call  them  so ;  and  the  real  botanist 
prizes  every  little  meanest  one  of  them,  and  gives 
it  a  respectful  Latin  name,  and  stores  it  among 
his  treasures.  And  the  Lord  cares  for  them  all, 
for  these  also  are  a  part  of  His  ways,  and  thus 
*'  He  reneweth  the  face  of  the  earth." 

Or,  come  up  higher.  Look  at  all  this  in  these 
bodies  of  ours.  You  cut  your  finger:  you  can 
see  and  feel  that.  But  who  can  see  the  actual 
working  of  the  process,  by  which  it  heals  again. 
You  talk  of  granulation  and  the  formation  of 
tiny  cells  one  from  another,  and  so  forth.  True, 
but  that  is  only  the  merest  outside  of  the  mat- 
ter, and  there  your  knowledge  stops.  Often  you 
cannot  tell  even  so  much.  Here  is  a  poor  woman 
lying  sick  and  ill  in  a  room  that  since  she  lay 
there  has  grown  littered  and  dirty,  with  foul  bad 
air,  and  children  messing  about;  and  the  doctor 
comes,  and  reads  the  story  at  a  glance,  —  hard 


142  THE   HEALING  FORCES  OF  GOD 

work,  poor  food ;  —  for  what  medicine  can  do, 
gives  such  remedy  as  he  can,  at  least  to  help 
things,  and  as  he  will  say  to  you,  to  give  nature 
a  chance  —  but  ''  he  will  ask  the  district  nurse 
to  call."  Ah,  there  is  some  help !  —  a  kind 
woman's  face;  a  deft  womanly  hand,  making 
some  kind  of  a  pillow,  straightening  things  out 
a  little,  encouraging  the  eldest  child  to  do  what 
she  can;  opening  the  window,  sponging  the  hot 
face  and  grimy  hands;  and  shewing  the  neigh- 
bor-body loitering  helplessly  about,  half  a  dozen 
little  things  that  any  one  can  do,  once  shewn  how ; 
why  when  the  nurse  goes  away  to  some  other  poor 
sufferer,  even  before  the  little  morsel  of  nicely 
cooked  food  that  she  will  perhaps  send,  is  come, 
the  poor  woman  feels  the  room  a  sweeter  place, 
and  can  be  more  patient  with  the  children,  and 
feels  in  herself,  a  new  hope  of  getting  well  again, 
—  and  a  cheery  thought,  perhaps,  of  how  that 
little  room  might  be  a  brighter  place  than  for  a 
long  time  past  she  has  had  spirit  to  make  it. 

Or,  you  take  an  ailing,  drooping  child  out  of 
the  close,  bad  air  of  some  poor  court,  away  to  the 
seaside  or  the  open  hills;  and  gradually  the  thin 
little  limbs  fill  out,  and  the  pale  face  shews  a  new 
colour,  and  the  listless,  feeble  voice  is  shout- 
ing with  the  children  at  play.  What  is  it  ?  Who 
has  done  it?     Somebody  will  tell  you  perhaps 


THE    HEALING    FORCES    OF    GOD  I43 

that  it  is  the  "  ozone "  in  the  air.  But  how 
far  in,  does  that  go  to  any  real  explanation? 
It  may  be  true  as  far  as  it  does  go  —  but  how 
far  in  is  that?  The  Psalmist  did  not  know 
much  about  ozone  —  but  his  thought  about 
such  things,  was  — "  Bless  the  Lord,  O  my 
soul,  and  forget  not  all  his  benefits!  who 
healeth  all  thy  diseases,  who  redeemeth  thy 
life  from  destruction;  who  crowneth  thee 
with  loving-kindness  and  tender  mercy ! "  I 
do  not  see  why  the  two  thoughts  should  not 
go  together.  For  they  belong  together.  That 
is  why  I  have  put  as  my  subject  the  healing 
forces  of  God.  Of  Nature,  if  you  will,  cer- 
tainly—  or  rather  in  Nature —  ;  but  that  only 
sends  us  to  outward  phenomena,  and  trains  of 
carefully  observed  cause  and  effect,  and  we  are 
soon  at  the  end  of  all  we  know,  or  are  likely 
to  know.  Do  not  let  even  that  little  that  we 
observe  in  the  outward  order  be  despised.  The 
true  thought  reaches  all  the  way  from  the  vast 
invisible  life  that  we  call  God,  to  the  visible 
life  and  form  of  outward  Nature.  As  Tenny- 
son says  — 

"  If  He  thunder  by  Law,  the  thunder  is  yet 
His  voice  "  and  if  we  find  out  the  law  of  the  thun- 
der, still  God  is  there;  and  so  if  we  find  out  the 
law  of  our  healing,  still  God  is  there.     The  true 


144  THE    HEALING   FORCES   OF   GOD 

thought  will  keep  the  two  things  together,  all 
the  outward  fact  and  law  that  we  can  observe, 
and  all  the  Divine  meaning  and  Will,  to  which, 
(with  however  long  a  gap  in  our  tracing),  our 
observation  leads  us  back.  So  we  have  to  in- 
clude in  grateful  reverence  not  only  all  our  faith 
in  the  soul  and  God,  but  the  outward  body  and 
the  natural  world,  and  all  the  science  and  all 
the  law  that  are  stored  in  the  chemist's  shelves, 
or  in  the  Physician's  brain.  There  is  the  es- 
sential shallowness  of  this  latest  fad  which  calls 
itself  *'  Christian  science,"  but  which  is  really 
as  far  from  Christianity  as  from  science.  It  en- 
tirely dissociates  the  outward  fact  and  law,  from 
the  inward  spiritual  and  divine.  It  treats  the 
outward  order,  with  its  disorders  which  are  only 
another  side  of  the  order,  as  nothing  —  mere 
evil  illusion,  the  belief  that  they  are  anything 
being  in  fact  the  only  real  disease!  We  are  to 
think  ourselves  part  of  God.  The  one  formula 
for  all  outward  ailment  —  or  what  we  think  out- 
ward ailment,  is,  to  become  absolutely  possessed 
with  the  omnipresence  and  love  of  God ! 

The  extravagance  is  all  the  sadder  because  it 
borders  upon  the  deepest  truth,  but  taking  in 
that  alone,  and  out  of  all  proportion,  not  only 
makes  itself  ridiculous,  and  tends  to  set  people 
against  it.     For  God  is  in  all  things;  and  in 


THE   HEALING   FORCES   OF   GOD  I45 

the  make-up  of  our  complex  human  being  Mind 
is  King.  Among  the  "  heaHng  forces  of  God/' 
are  faith,  and  happy  trust,  and  man's  own  will 
—  these  are  part  —  but  to  treat  any  of  them 
as  all,  is  just  ''  the  falsehood  of  extremes." 
After  all,  the  body,  also,  is  the  Lord's,  and  fear- 
fully and  wonderfully  made;  and  its  laws  also 
are  "  parts  of  His  ways."  So  let  man  study  rev- 
erently the  Physical  laws,  the  laws  of  bodily 
health  among  them  —  and  follow  them  out  and 
make  the  best  of  them.  Only,  let  these  thoughts 
of  law  and  knowledge  lie  in  man's  mind,  folded 
in  the  vaster  thought  which  we  call  God. 

I  said  that  all  this  is  a  thought  of  Trust.  And 
I  think  it  is.  Knowledge  is  something  —  yes, 
is  much  —  and  yet  when  we  have  followed  it 
the  best  and  closest  that  we  can,  it  goes  such 
a  little  way,  after  all,  back  into  the  real  nature 
of  things;  but  as  it  shades  away  out  of  our 
sight,  it  shades  off,  not  into  nothingness  or  a 
mere  confusion  of  half-seen  facts  and  fancies, 
but  into  a  mystery  of  dimly  discerned  life  and 
will,  and  of  vast,  hinted  meanings. 

Among  those  hinted  meanings  is  this  which 
all  that  I  have  said  leads  up  to:  A  sort  of  heal- 
ing impulse  seems  to  be  part  of  the  Animating 
force  of  Nature.  It  is  not  a  little  detail  of 
Zoology  or  Botany.     It  seems  part  of  the  prin- 


146  THE   HEALING   FORCES   OF   GOD 

ciple  of  things  —  a  silent  tendency  towards  order, 
beauty,  life.  The  original  force  of  evolution, 
in  spite  of  some  reversions  here  and  there  is 
quietly  onward.  You  may  not  see  it  to-day; 
but  look  at  the  universe  of  the  primal  fire-mists 
and  compare  it  with  the  universe  into  which 
it  has  grown,  to-day,  and  the  onward  tendency 
is  unmistakable  —  and  the  more  you  allow  for 
the  occasional  cataclysms  which  mark  off  the 
cosmic  periods,  and  have  seemed  so  destructive, 
the  more  you  are  impressed  with  the  silent  re- 
storative and  healing  forces  which  have  kept  re- 
newing the  face  of  the  world.  We  have  to 
take  in  that,  as  the  background  of  all  our  studies 
of  the  ways  of  things  in  Nature,  and  of  all  our 
endeavours  to  do  any  healing  we  can,  ourselves. 
And  it  is  a  great  thought  of  trust.  Man,  in  his 
attempts  at  healing,  however  poor  they  may  be, 
is  helping  the  great  meanings  of  God.  And 
he  will  do  his  healing  part  the  better,  more  con- 
fident when  on  the  right  track,  and  less  dis- 
mayed by  sometimes  failures, —  if  he  remem- 
bers this  great  truth  and  thinks  of  it  — "  God's 
Healing  forces." 

I  think  it  is  here  that  the  story  of  Christ 
always  has  a  meaning  in  the  world's  life,  beyond 
that  of  any  private  individual  of  this  or  that  time, 
however  wise  and  good.     It  seems  as  if  that 


THE   HEALING   FORCES   OF   GOD  I47 

overmastering  sense  of  sonship  and  of  working 
with  the  indwelHng  spirit  of  God  —  something 
which  all  God's  children  might  have  and  which 
he  longed  for  all  to  have  —  but  oh  how  few  had  it, 
or  even  dream  of  what  it  might  be  —  was  to  him, 
life's  great  reality.  And  it  seems  as  if  that  lifted 
him  into  a  real  leadership  and  Lordship  over 
the  thought  and  life  of  man.  And  in  nothing 
was  this  more  striking,  than  in  his  ministry 
and  proclamation  of  new  life  to  men.  Life,  hope, 
blessing  and  all  healing,  in  the  new  life  of  men, 
in  the  love  of  God  and  of  one  another  —  that 
was  the  essence  of  his  gospel.  The  world  seemed 
a  crushed,  crippled  world  to  him.  Among  his 
own  people  their  very  religion,  seemed  rather 
to  be  crushing  men,  than  uplifting  them.  In 
that  old  light  of  the  Law,  all  life  lay  burdened 
by  judgment.  All  disease,  especially,  was  judg- 
ment for  some  sin,  even  if  men  did  not  know 
what.  That  thought  crushed  the  fresh  energy 
which  might  have  striven  for  health.  Such  ef- 
fort would  seem  mere  useless  writhing  against 
the  decrees.  It  was  not  the  mere  sickness,  it 
was  this  crushed,  hopeless  condition  that  called 
Jesus  forth.  With  his  heart  full  of  the  sense  of 
the  life-giving  presence  and  love  of  God,  it 
seemed  as  if  the  very  message  of  that  would 
be  blessing  and  healing  to  the  world.    How  much 


148  THE   HEALING   FORCES   OF   GOD 

the  Spring  and  power  of  that  message  had  to  do 
with  all  that  healing  that  we  read  of,  and  with 
all  the  impression  of  healing  power  in  him  which 
irradiates  the  Gospel  story,  who  shall  say?  Sim- 
ply it  seems  as  if,  wherever  he  came,  something 
of  a  new  life,  and  with  it  a  new  gladness  of 
health,  pulsed  through  the  multitudes  who  gath- 
ered around  him.  And  some  explain  it  one  way, 
some  another ;  '^  faith,"  "  power  of  mind  over 
matter  " ;  —  and  some  —  among  whom  I  claim  a 
place  —  do  not  explain  it,  simple  accepting 
Christ's  feeling  about  it  which  found  God's  power 
in  the  forefront  of  it,  himself  only  the  humble 
instrument. 

But  it  is  with  regard  to  the  higher  moral  and 
spiritual  healings,  that  the  thought  of  the  man 
not  knowing  who  had  healed  him,  comes  with 
deepest  suggestiveness.  Christ's  miracles  of 
healing  are  always  going  on  —  though  now  peo- 
ple say :  "  it  is  only  the  healing  of  the  soul." 
Only?  as  if  there  was  any  healing  in  the  world 
to  compare  with  that  of  turning  a  man  from 
evil  to  good,  and  helping  him  to  keep  on  trying 
and  trying  again,  until  he  is  a  changed  man. 
That  was  the  greatest  wonder  in  the  old  time. 
So  quietly  he  came,  unnoticed  in  the  crowding 
of  history :  —  a  Syrian  peasant,  —  which  was 
all  men  saw  of  him,  a  Syrian  peasant  —  musing 


THE    HEALING   FORCES   OF   GOD  I49 

on  the  Salvation  of  the  world.  And  for  a  year 
or  two  he  preached  the  new  life  among  the  peo- 
ple, and  then  he  passed  away  out  of  sight,  as  he 
did  that  day  from  the  pool  of  Bethesda.  But 
when  he  left  the  world,  he  left  it  different  from 
what  he  found  it ;  —  new  seeds  were  growing 
in  it,  new  forces;  the  blind  soul  saw,  the  par- 
alysed will  rose  up  and  w^alked,  the  crippled  life 
of  man  stood  upright  on  its  feet.  And  yet  so 
quietly  did  the  blessing  come,  so  little  with  any 
"  observation,"  that  it  was  as  the  old  word  says : 
"  He  that  was  healed  wist  not  who  it  was." 
They  thought  —  that  was  the  form  their  wonder 
grew  into  —  that  it  must  have  been  God  himself 
who  had  come  down  and  wrought  such  blessing. 
They  did  not  know  the  imperishable  power  there 
is  in  simple  human  goodness  working  in  love  of 
God  and  man ;  in  a  simple  human  soul  raised  to  its 
highest  power  by  the  felt  indwelling  of  the  spirit. 
But  then,  since  Christ  shewed  men  how,  the  heal- 
ing work  of  his  life  and  spirit  has  been  repeated 
all  along  the  ages  —  and  always  in  the  same 
quiet  way.  Mostly  men  have  not  recognised  it. 
They  have  set  up  their  great  hierarchies,  shak- 
ing the  earth  with  the  tread  of  their  power,  and 
asserting  themselves  to  be  the  only  channels  of 
healing  mercy  to  mankind,  the  representatives  of 
Christ  on  earth.    And  the  healing  work  has  gone 


150  THE   HEALING  FORCES  OF   GOD 

on,  yet  not  much  through  them.  But  always, 
up  and  down  the  world,  there  have  been  quiet 
faithful  hearts  which  have  caught  the  master's 
spirit  and  have  touched  with  that  spirit  the  works 
and  cares,  the  sorrows  and  the  sicknesses  of 
men.  The  world  is  touched  to-day  with  a  hu- 
maner  spirit  than,  I  think,  ever  before.  Often 
it  hardly  knows  from  whom  the  healing  comes. 
It  is  some  one  close  about,  a  long  way  nearer 
than  that  Jesus  of  eighteen  hundred  years  ago, 
who  gets  a  hold  on  his  fellow-clerk  or  work- 
mate, and  sets  him  feeling  that  life  might  be  a 
better  thing;  wins  him  into  this  class  or  meet- 
ing, or  that  little  work  of  help.  Yet,  is  it  his  own 
power  by  which  he  helps  and  heals  him?  Ask 
him  and  he  will  tell  you,  no;  it  is  but  the  carry- 
ing on  of  a  power  which  took  hold  of  him; 
and  if  you  trace  back  all  this  sense  of  help,  in 
man,  you  simply  come  through  the  long  ages 
back  to  Paul's  *'  I  can  do  all  things  through 
Christ  who  strengtheneth  me !  " 

So  come  the  healing  forces  of  God,  pulsing 
along  the  ages,  through  the  world, —  working  in 
the  powders  of  Nature  and  the  best  thoughts  and 
lives  of  men;  not  passing  by  even  a  poor  crus- 
tacean that  has  lost  its  claw,  or  a  tree  that  has 
been  battered  by  the  storm;  but  lavishing  their 
subtlest  care  on  the  bruised  bodies,  and  weak 


THE   HEALING   FORCES   OF   GOD  I5I 

and  ailing  lives  of  men;  and  coming,  in  divinest 
ways  of  mercy  and  help,  to  sin-sick  souls,  and  all 
the  o'erwearied  and  unblessed,  who  lie  about  the 
byways  of  the  world. 

So  has  God  led  on  the  onward  movement  of 
His  world,  and  leads  it  still.  And  we  are  to  be 
His  Helpers! 


THE  WORLD'S  DEBT  TO  CHRIST 

What  does  the  world  really  owe  to  Christ? 
In  past  time  the  answer  was  comparatively  easy. 
Because,  for  one  thing,  Christ  stood  to  men  as 
God  appearing  in  human  form  —  something  vis- 
ible and  tangible  to  look  to  and  to  pray  to :  and, 
for  something  almost  more  momentous,  it  was 
held  that  he  had  paid  the  penalty  of  the  world's 
sin  by  a  substituted  sacrifice  which  was  to  be 
for  ever  the  only  escape  of  Man  from  Hell. 

But  this  answer  does  not  meet  the  real  ques- 
tion as  it  is  coming  up  at  the  present  day.  Even 
those  who  most  cling  to  the  divineness  of  Jesus, 
are  growing  less  sure  of  his  having  been  God  in 
that  visible,  objective  sense.  And  the  atonement 
instead  of  being  the  old  substituted  sacrifice,  is 
now  put  as  the  method  of  God's  love  for  draw- 
ing His  children  towards  Him.  In  fact  Christ's 
work  in  the  world  is,  more  and  more,  coming 
to  be  regarded  not  as  an  isolated  divine  expe- 
dient to  rescue  mankind  from  a  breakdown,  but 
as  a  part  of  the  divine  education  and  development 
of  the  race. 

'53 


154  THE   world's   debt   to   CHRIST 

Well,  but  what,  then,  has  been  Christ's  part 
in  this?  Man,  by  God's  mercy,  has  had  many 
helpers.  Why,  then,  from  all  the  teachers  and 
leaders  who  have  passed  across  the  page  of  his- 
tory, single  out  Jesus  for  such  peculiar  and  per- 
manent reverence?  That  is  the  question  for  us. 
I  put  aside,  indeed,  all  idea  of  his  having  been 
different  from  the  rest  of  humanity  by  any  su- 
perhuman birth.  One  of  the  most  precious  things 
in  his  wonderful  life,  is,  its  closeness  to  our 
own,  not  an  instance  of  the  Godhead  coming 
down,  but  of  humanity  lifted  up  and  evermore 
lifting  us  up.  And  so,  indeed,  I  think  the  whole 
matter  may  be  summed  up  in  this :  that  the  world 
owes  to  Jesus  Christ  the  noblest,  furthest  reach- 
ing influence  towards  truth  and  goodness, —  an 
influence  which,  first  taking  hold  of  his  imme- 
diate followers  and  making  them  new  men,  went 
forth  through  them  in  ever  widening  circles  to 
mankind,  and  still  operates  unspent  to-day.  That 
was  what  those  first  followers  meant,  in  speaking 
of  "  the  grace  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  " —  sim- 
ply that  nameless  influence  which  they  felt  work- 
ing in  themselves  and  saw  working  in  others. 
Very  curious  is  the  way  in  which  that  influence, 
took  bold,  and  has  kept  hold  ever  since.  My 
old  tutor,  John  James  Taylor  —  one  of  the  most 
fair-minded   students  of  history  —  used  to  say 


THE   world's   debt   TO   CHRIST  1 55 

that  even  if  all  personal  mention  of  Jesus  had 
been  lost,  the  changing  aspect  of  history  about 
his  time,  and  the  development  of  new  feelings 
and  thoughts  in  the  world,  would  force  us  to 
conclude  that  some  extraordinary  influence  must 
have  been  at  work  to  produce  it. 

That  influence  can  be  traced  working  along 
two  lines :  in  new  convictions  of  Human  Duty, 
and  in  a  clearer  and  brighter  sense  of  Divine 
Relations  and  Realities. 

I.  We  owt  to  Christ,  a  new  thought  of  Man 
—  man's  life,  man's  duties,  man's  relation  to 
his  fellow  man.  Man,  as  such,  was  cheap  in  the 
ancient  world.  There  was  a  strange  careless- 
ness of  human  life.  Suicide  was  no  sin;  hardly 
was  infanticide.  The  sports  of  the  great  cities 
were  murderous  combats  in  which  the  lives  of 
men  were  of  no  more  account  than  the  lives  of 
beasts.  Wherever  Christianity  came,  life  ac- 
quired a  new  sacredness;  Suicide  became  a 
dreadful  sin;  Infanticide,  as  an  institution,  dis- 
appeared. Christianity  had  made  the  nobler 
heathens  ashamed  of  their  ferocious,  sports  be- 
fore it  had  itself  gained  the  power  to  suppress 
them.  But,  most  of  all,  did  this  same  reverence 
for  man,  as  man,  shew  itself  in  the  treatment  of 
the  poor,  the  weak,  and  especially  of  the  sinful. 
Every  form  of  Heathenism  deified  Strength,  and 


156  THE   world's  debt  TO   CHRIST 

regarded  the  weak  and  incapable  with  contempt. 
I  do  not  mean  that  there  was  not  any  kindness 
towards  these  in  the  old  world,  but  that  there 
was  hardly  any  sense  of  duty  to  them, —  and 
of  a  divine  meaning  in  the  very  fact  of  the  strong 
and  the  weak  existing  side  by  side.  But  wherever 
Christianity  came,  it  set  men  caring  for  the  sick, 
the  crippled,  the  dying,  and  the  degraded,  —  as 
an  essential  part  of  Christianity,  and  raised' up 
institutions  of  such  care,  I  do  not  say  absolutely 
new,  but  to  an  extent  before  utterly  undreamed 
of. 

It  was  this  new  Christian  sense  of  the  sacred- 
ness  of  man  as  man  which  led  to  the  gradual 
abolition  of  slavery.  I  am  not  aware  in  all  an- 
cient history  of  a  single  sign  of  the  feeling  of 
slavery  being  wrong,  or  of  any  effort  to  do 
away  with  it.  We  have  seen  slavery  defended 
in  our  own  day,  though  only  by  the  mischievous 
theory  of  the  Old  Testament  being  as  divine  and 
authoritative  as  the  new.  But,  till  Christ  had 
come  and  gone,  men  were  not  even  conscious 
of  there  being  anything  in  slavery  to  defend. 
Certainly  Paul  advised  Onesimus  to  go  back  to 
his  former  master;  but  he  wrote  with  him  to 
Philemon :  *'  Receive  him,  not  now  as  a  slave, 
but  as  a  brother  beloved."  Paul  might  not  dis- 
tinctly see  it;  but  the  religion  which  began  by 


THE   WORLDS   DEBT   TO    CHRIST  1 5/ 

claiming  for  the  slaves  among  its  members  the 
place  of  "  brothers  beloved "  really  sealed  the 
fate  of  slavery. 

The  letter  and  the  form,  Churches  and  Priest- 
hoods, have,  indeed,  often  enough  been  instru- 
ments of  oppression;  but  the  weak  and  the  op- 
pressed have  always  felt,  that  the  spirit  of  Christ 
was  on  their  side.  The  strongest  appeal  of  the 
mediaeval  satirists  who  lashed  the  worldliness  and 
corruption  of  Christ's  churches,  was  always  to 
the  simple  loving  life  of  Christ  himself.  And  so, 
charity,  at  least,  never  failed,  —  and  though  that, 
too,  often  did  harm  —  and  sometimes  does  it  still 
—  yet  it  keeps  rising  to  better  and  more  thought- 
ful ways  of  helping.  And  there  is  one  form  of 
Christian  charity,  that,  I  think  is  almost  abso- 
lutely new  in  Christianity,  I  mean  the  love  and 
pity  for  the  sinful  and  degraded,  the  longing 
to  win  them  out  of  their  lost  state,  the  thousand- 
fold unceasing  effort  to  save  men  and  women 
back  to  goodness  —  I  think  that  this  is  the  crown- 
ing outcome  of  that  sense  of  human  worth  and 
human  brotherhood  which  Christ  brought  home 
to  mankind,  as  a  living  and  imperishable  motive. 

Again,  the  world  owes  to  Christ  the  highest 
teachings  and  the  strongest  assurance  of  spirit- 
ual things.  It  is  noticeable  how  these  two  have 
gone  together  in  his  work.     He  made  religious 


158  THE   world's   debt   TO   CHRIST 

things  the  most  spiritual  that  they  have  ever 
been,  the  most  entirely  of  the  inward  life,  invis- 
ible, intangible;  and  yet  none  has  ever  made 
men  feel  them  so  intensely  real.  And  I  am  upon 
very  broad  ground  now  —  for  even  those  who 
in  the  present  day  most  protest  against  keeping 
the  thought  of  Christ  himself  so  prominent  in 
this  spiritual  religion,  constantly  refer  to  the  high 
pure  Theism  which  they  say  Christ  taught,  only, 
they  think  he  meant  us  to  hold  that  faith  of  his, 
not  to  associate  his  name,  and  the  memory  of 
him,  with  it.  I  think  that  is  a  question  of  which 
way  we  can  best  realize  that  faith  and  keep  hold 
of  it.  But  anyhow,  whether  we  are  to  perma- 
nently associate  our  faith  with  him  or  not,  it 
is  impossible  to  help  feeling  what  a  debt  we  owe 
to  him  for  it.  Why,  the  whole  field  of  religious 
faith  has  been  a  new  thing  to  men,  since  Christ 
came.  The  thought  of  God  has  been  a  new  thing. 
Of  course  there  have  been  many  of  the  older 
thoughts  which  have  still  lingered  on,  and  often 
alloyed  and  coarsened  his  pure  Theistic  teaching. 
But  at  the  heart  of  Christianity,  the  thought  of 
God  has  been  a  new  thing,  a  holier,  tenderer, 
more  loving  presence, —  differing  from  anything 
that  either  Greeks  or  Jews  had  any  real  idea  of 
before.  So  also  has  Prayer.  The  thought  of 
Prayer,  the  feeling  about  prayer,  which  Christ 


THE    WORLDS   DEBT   TO    CHRIST  1 59 

left  among  his  disciples,  and  which,  ever  since, 
has  given  the  key  note  to  the  piety  of  Christen- 
dom, was  a  new  thing  in  the  world.  Prayer 
was  much  more  of  a  formality  before,  a  matter 
for  priests  to  do,  or  a  petition  for  certain  definite 
gifts  or  help, —  the  lowly  homage  of  subjects  pros- 
trate before  a  great  King.  You  find  hardly  a  trace 
before,  —  except  here  and  there  in  the  ver^r  lofti- 
est of  the  Psalms  —  of  that  pouring  out  of  the 
heart  to  God  as  to  a  friend,  and  of  that  joy 
in  such  personal  communion,  which  sprang  up  at 
once  in  the  early  church,  and  which  all  through 
the  Christian  ages  has  given  the  peculiar  char- 
acter —  so  homelike  and  loving  —  to  the  piety 
of  those  who  have  really  caught  the  spirit  of 
Christ. 

And,  also.  Immortality  has  been  a  new  thing 
to  men,  since  Christ's  time.  Of  course  I  do  not 
for  a  moment  mean  to  claim  Immortality  as 
something  of  which  mankind  had  no  knowledge 
until  Christ  revealed  it.  The  fact  seems  rather 
to  be  that  as  man's  life,  and  consciousness  of 
life,  developes,  at  a  certain  stage  belief  in  life  to 
come  is  a  part  of  man's  development.  So  that, 
even  if  it  be  true  that,  in  the  very  lowest  grades 
or  Savagism,  tribes  are  found  with  no  thought 
of  a  hereafter  (though  this  is  by  no  means  cer- 
tain) some  thought  of  it  is  Universal  wherever 


l60  THE   world's   debt   TO   CHRIST 

life  has  reached  to  the  clear,  full,  human  stage. 
And  sometimes  —  as  among  the  ancient  Egyp- 
tians, this  belief  has  become  tremendously  real- 
istic —  and  so  again  among  the  Persians,  from 
whom  the  Jews  seem  to  have  imbibed  the 
thought,  as  a  part  of  Religion,  during  the  Cap- 
tivity. But  take  the  world  as  it  was  when  Chris- 
tianity came,  and  the  belief  in  Immortality  was  a 
dim,  distant  shadowy  thing,  a  joyless  spectral 
state,  only  a  degree  better  than  annihilation.  It 
seemed  to  have  little  moral  relation  to  the  pres- 
ent. It  did  not  make  the  sinner  more  afraid 
of  sin,  nor  the  good  man  more  strong  in  his 
righteousness.  Especially  in  the  Greek  and 
Roman  religions,  it  was  like  a  faint  shadow  of 
the  present,  —  as  it  has  well  been  called,  **  an 
aftershine  of  the  sun  that  had  set,  not  a  new 
day."  Indeed  it  always  seems  to  me  one  of  the 
strongest  tokens  of  how  belief  in  life  to  come, 
is  a  very  part  of  man  and  so  must  be  true,  that 
even  so  faint  and  joyless  as  it  was,  with  noth- 
ing to  lead  man  to  love  it,  still  the  belief  in  it,  in 
the  people  at  large,  never  shewed  any  sign  of 
dying  out.  But  Christ  made  the  hereafter  a  new 
thing  to  men  —  a  real  glorious  world,  a  con- 
tinuation of  this  present  life,  —  this  present  life, 
not  weakened  and  its  vitality  faded  out,  but 
strengthened  and  ennobled.     Even  the  very  ex- 


THE   world's   debt   TO   CHRIST  l6l 

aggeratlons  of  his  teachings,  the  extravagant  re- 
ahsm  of  thrones,  and  crowns  and  harps,  the 
strained  literahzing  of  his  parables  of  judgment 
into  material  hells  and  torments  —  even  these 
arose  from  the  new  reality  with  which  he  in- 
vested the  future  life  in  man's  thoughts.  So  it 
has  been  a  new  thing  to  men,  ever  since,  more 
real,  more  living,  more  happy,  something  to  re- 
joice in,  and  to  think  of  with  a  tender,  home- 
like trust,  —  such  a  feeling  as  Whittier  expresses 
—  that 

*'  Death  is  but  a  covered  way. 
To  lead  us  into  life." 

Of  course,  all  this  strong  assurance  of  spirit- 
ual things  which  I  thus  trace  to  Jesus  Christ, 
has  weakened  and  deteriorated  from  what  he 
left  it.  The  Institutions,  to  which  his  influence 
gave  rise  have  never  been  at  all  equal  to  the 
spirit  and  impulse  which  started  them.  But  that 
is  only  human.  The  noblest  movements,  all  along 
history,  have  always  been  belittled  by  those  who 
have  taken  them  up,  and  have  been  utilized  and 
exploited  for  all  manner  of  poor  and  selfish  ends. 
But  in  watching  the  development  of  all  the  in- 
stitutional life  which  grew  out  of  Christ's  influ- 
ence, the  striking  thing  is,  really,  not  that  the 
institution  has  been  poorer  than  the  originating 


l62  THE   world's   DEBT   TO   CHRIST 

influence,  but  that  the  influence  has  still  lived  be- 
yond the  institution.  Christ's  influence,  has,  in- 
deed, often  seemed  smothered  and  lost  —  but  it 
has  risen  up  again;  it  has  had  not  one  resur- 
rection but  many  resurrections.  It  has  broken 
out  of  its  corruptions  in  uprisings  of  Reforma- 
tion and  the  starting  of  new  religious  move- 
ments; and  always  the  motive  power  of  these 
has  been  the  spirit  of  the  original  Christ,  as  some 
Huss  or  Luther,  some  Waldensian  or  Puritan, 
a  Fox  or  Wesley,  a  Channing  or  a  Parker,  has 
caught  the  beauty  and  the  power  of  it  anew. 
And  this  thing  remains.  It  is  not  a  mere  his- 
torical memory,  but  a  spirit  that  in  strange  and 
subtle  ways  still  takes  hold  of  men  and  women 
and  '^  makes  all  things  new."  You  can  trace  it 
still  to-day,  in  the  common  feeling  of  men  quite 
apart  from  ecclesiastical  channels.  You  can 
trace  it  in  the  very  word  ''  Christian."  Just  think 
how  that  word  is  —  not  as  defined  by  the 
churches,  but  as  felt  —  say  by  *'  the  man  in  the 
street "  who  very  likely  could  not  define  it,  and 
has  little  faith  in  the  way  the  churches  would 
define  it !  When  common  people  see  a  good  lov- 
ing action,  or  a  sweet  self-sacrificing  life  —  they 
say,  *'  Ah  that's  real  Christianity !  "  So,  even 
those  who  openly  denounce  Christianity,  as  hav- 
ing a  mischievous  influence  in  the  world,  —  if 


THE   world's   debt   TO   CHRIST  163 

they  see  a  professing  Christ  doing  some  bad 
mean  thing,  are  just  as  ready  as  any  to  attack  his 
inconsistency  and  to  cry  "  Where  is  your  Chris- 
tianity?" Thus,  they  unconsciously  testify  that 
in  their  deepest  thought  ''  Christianity "  is  a 
noble,  beautiful  thing,  if  you  can  only  have  it 
in  its  reality.  And  whence  have  they  got  that 
thought?  from  the  traditional  usage  of  the 
churches  ?  No !  The  churches  have,  mostly,  — 
all  the  ages  through  —  protested  against  that  use 
of  the  word  ''  Christian,"  as  designating  the  no- 
blest, kindest  goodness,  —  and  have  tried  to  limit 
it  to  some  mere  ecclesiastical  meaning.  But  it 
has  been  too  strong  for  them!  Outside  the 
churches,  in  man's  common  thought,  and  in  the 
simple  Gospels  which  constantly  renew  man's 
common  thought,  has  come  steadily  down  this 
large,  kind,  beautiful  thought  of  duty  and  life 
which  Christ  taught  —  and  lived  —  and  it  holds 
its  place  for  ever.  And  that  very  thought,  and  the 
word  which  stands  for  it  so  vividly  and  pointedly, 
are  part  of  the  world's  debt  to  him. 

I  know  that  it  is  often  objected  to  all  this 
that  what  I  attribute  to  the  influence  of  Christ 
is  really  partly  due  to  the  teachings  and  influence 
of  other  great  lives  before  him,  and  partly  to  the 
general  movement  of  civilization. 

Well,  by  all  means  let  us  take  all  possible  ac- 


164  THE    world's   debt   TO    CHRIST 

count  of  these  causes,  but  I  do  not  think  they 
very  much  affect  the  value  of  what  Christ  has 
done  for  us.  I  rejoice  in  every  great  and  wise 
word  that  in  these  days  is  being  dug  out  from  the 
sacred  books  of  other  rehgions.  They  find  me 
a  noble  hymn  from  the  Vedas;  I  delight  in  it; 
a  fine  saying  of  Confucius :  thank  God  for  that 
also ;  great  sentences  from  Egyptian  tombs ;  lofty 
sentiments  from  Greek  Tragedians  and  philo- 
sophic Romans,  parables  and  precepts  from  Hil- 
lel  that  are  curiously  like  passages  in  the  sermon 
on  the  mount.  Good!  But  how  do  these  things 
affect  our  debt  to  Christ?  Archaeologists  find 
here  and  there  some  very  good  wheat  in  the 
mummy  wTappings  of  Ancient  Egypt.  But  it  is 
not  that  on  which  we  live.  Those  noble  sayings 
of  the  ancient  world  have  not  much  more  to  do 
with  the  real  mental  or  moral  condition  of  man- 
kind, to-day,  than  that  mummy  wheat  has  to  do 
with  our  bodily  nourishment.  They  were  great 
seed-thoughts,  but  for  the  most  part  they  lay 
folded  round  with  esoteric  seclusion,  or  smoth- 
ered in  the  embalm-ments  of  the  dead  past.  As 
a  matter  of  simple  literary  fact,  it  is  Christianity 
itself,  that  has  dug  them  out,  or  at  any  rate  has 
brought  them  into  the  light  of  all  this  new  ap- 
preciation of  them !  Why,  it  has  been  the  Chris- 
tian Missions  in  India  which  put  Hindu  Pundits 


THE   world's   debt   TO    CHRIST  165 

on  the  track  of  the  pure  original  Theism  which 
really  lay  back  of  Brahminism ;  and  it  was  even 
European  Sanskirt  scholarship  which  shewed  to 
India  that  the  text  from  the  Vedas  which  was 
always  quoted  as  the  authority  for  Suttee  —  the 
burning  of  widows  —  had  really  no  place  in  the 
original  Sanskrit.  —  No.  What  all  this  bring- 
ing out  of  the  nobler  religious  thinking  of  the 
ancient  world  has  really  done,  is,  to  place  the 
whole  subject  of  religion  on  a  stronger  founda- 
tion, —  by  shewing  how  all  the  best  human 
thought  has  always  been  tending  in  the  same 
direction;  and  so  it  has  helped  not  to  lessen  but 
to  increase  our  debt  to  him,  who  carried  it  to 
the  highest  point,  and  projected  it  with  purer 
and  stronger  power  than  ever  before  among  the 
enduring  thoughts  of  the  world.  What  those 
thoughts  could  do,  had  been  done.  The  ancient 
world,  was,  in  its  higher  culture,  their  work. 
But  it  was  not  out  of  that  culture  that  Christ 
came.  The  ancient  civilization  was  the  very 
thing  that  did  not  produce  either  Christ  or  Chris- 
tianity, the  very  thing  that  most  rejected  and 
opposed  them.  It  is  when  I  most  realize  the 
grandeur  of  that  ancient  world,  in  its  civilization, 
its  commerce,  its  literature,  its  art;  it  is  when 
I  think  of  the  magnificence  of  Rome  and  the 
culture  of  Athens,  and  the  Libraries  and  Col- 


l66  THE   world's   debt   to    CHRIST 

leges  of  Egypt  —  and,  if  you  will,  the  learned 
Jewish  schools  of  Jerusalem  and  Babylon,  —  it 
is  then  that  I  realize  how  feeble  and  fading  was 
the  best  that  they  could  do.  And  then  I  most 
feel  what  an  immense  debt  we  owe  to  that  simple 
but  majestic  life  which,  growing  up  apart  from 
all  of  these,  gave  men  that  living  Word  which 
was  to  survive  through  their  decay,  and  to  bring 
out  what  has  well  been  called  '*  A  new  Edition 
of  human  nature."  Only  one  further  question 
remains.  Granting  that  Christ  did  all  this  in  that 
far  past  when  he  lived  and  in  the  generations 
to  which  his  personality  was  still  comparatively 
near,  is  there  anything  to  keep  special  hold  of  in 
the  present? 

I  think  there  is. 

I  think  the  life-image  which  we  have  of  Christ 
in  the  Gospels,  is  still  the  source  of  the  very 
purest  influence  among  men.  I  think  the  word 
and  spirit  of  that  life,  are  still  a  perpetually  fresh 
revelation  to  the  heart  of  moral  and  spiritual  real- 
ities. Look  where  you  will  among  all  the  strug- 
gle and  service  of  mankind,  from  the  slums  of 
our  great  cities,  to  the  villages  of  Pacific  Islands, 
or  the  motley  civilization  of  the  East,  —  and  — 
yes,  there  is  plenty  of  that  struggle  and  service, 
passing  under  the  Christian  name,  which  is  as 
poor  and  clumsy  as  you  will,  —  and,  still,  it  is 


THE   world's   debt   TO   CHRIST  1 6/ 

true  that  the  very  most  earnest,  and  searching, 
and  self-sacrificing  working  that  is  going  on 
among  men  finds  its  best  inspiration  in  the  Hfe 
and  word  of  Jesus  Christ. 

And  so  I  put  it  as  the  last  element  in  this 
great  debt  of  the  world  to  Christ,  that  in  him 
we  have  the  noblest  leadership  of  life.  Life  must 
have  personal  leadership  or  it  will  be  apt  to  be 
all  scattering,  —  scattering  in  its  thought,  scat- 
tering in  its  effort.  I  believe  there  is  a  pro- 
found truth  in  that  parable  of  the  vine  and  its 
branches.  It  is  not  more  isolated  living  that 
we  want,  but  growing,  and  acting,  together,  in 
loving  brotherhood  with  the  best  life  around  us, 
and  in  loving  communion  of  thought  and  follow- 
ing with  all  the  best  past  life  that  has  made  us 
what  we  are;  and  all  this  long  solidarity  is  clos- 
ened  to  its  strongest  in  earnest  discipleship  to  the 
great  Master  of  us  all.  It  need  not  be  any  blind, 
unreasoning  following  —  Christ,  of  all  teachers, 
certainly  never  asked  for  that.  With  him,  as  al- 
ways where  the  spirit  of  the  Lord  is,  "  there  is 
Liberty  "  —  but  liberty  is  perfected  not  in  self- 
conscious  individualism,  but  in  the  loyalty  of 
Love. 

So,  as  I  face  the  problems  of  this  marvelous 
age;  as  I  watch  the  workings  of  doubt;  as  I  fol- 
low the  revelations  of  science  which  only  lead 


l68  THE   world's   debt   to   CHRIST 

US  to  a  mystery  they  cannot  penetrate;  and  as  I 
note  all  the  restless  striving  of  the  world  for 
better  life,  —  I  am  thankful  for  every  light,  and 
for  all  great  teachers ;  —  but,  from  them  all,  my 
heart  turns  back  to  Christ  with  something  like 
that  old  cry  of  Peter's  —  "  Lord  to  whom  shall 
we  go  ?    Thou  hast  the  words  of  eternal  life  I " 


ANYTHING  NEW  IN  CHRISTIANITY? 

It  is  a  question  often  asked  in  these  investigat- 
ing days.  ''  How  much  in  Christianity  is  new  ?  " 
We  all  feel  that  it  is  — take  it  all  in  all  — a 
mighty  inspiration  and  uplifting  of  human  life 
that  has  come  to  the  world  through  Christ,  but 
—  how  much  was  actually  new?  Not  so  much 
as  used  to  be  thought.  It  used  to  be  thought  that 
the  whole  of  Christianity  was  a  brand-new  rev- 
elation, all  before  darkness  and  error.  But  as 
modern  Scholarship  has  spelled  its  way  into  the 
ancient  books  of  other  religions,  it  has  found 
there  many  a  noble  precept  and  truth  once 
thought  peculiar  to  the  Bible;  and,  again,  the 
study  of  evolution  has  shown  that  the  religion 
of  to-day  has  some  of  its  roots  away  back  of  all 
history.  And  still,  in  that  great  onward  move- 
ment of  human  religion  which  began  in  Christ, 
there  was  surely  something  new,  and  it  is  inter- 
esting to  consider  what  it  was. 

Let  us  first  give  a  thought  to  how  much  was 
not  new.  Why,  almost  the  whole  outward  ap- 
paratus and  usages  of  Christianity  were  merely 

169 


170  ANYTHING    NEW    IN    CHRISTIANITY? 

adaptations  —  and  developments.  The  Church 
building  itself  was  only  a  combination  of  the 
Jewish  Synagogue  and  the  Roman  Basilica.  The 
"  Pontiff  "  was  simply  the  "  Pontifex,"  an  old 
Roman  title  for  the  Pagan  priest.  The  white 
surplice  came  from  Egypt.  The  veneration  for 
the  Madonna  was  just  the  natural  clinging  to  the 
Mother  principle  in  Deity  coming  up  in  Chris- 
tianity; and  the  very  statues  of  the  Virgin  and 
child,  were,  to  begin  with,  the  old  images  of  Isis 
with  her  infant  Horus  under  a  new  name  —  as 
Pagan  busts  of  Jupiter  were  sometimes  made 
to  do  duty  for  St.  Peter,  and  representations  of 
Orpheus  playing  on  his  Lyre  to  the  beasts,  were 
adopted  as  types  of  Christ  and  his  preaching. 
The  Months  of  our  year,  and  the  days  of  our 
week  bear  traces  of  more  than  one  old  world 
Paganism,  our  Wednesdays  and  Thursdays,  the 
days  of  Woden  and  Thor;  January  and  March, 
the  months  of  Janus  and  of  Mars.  "  Easter  " 
is  simply  the  festival  of  the  old  Saxon  Spring 
Goddess,  "  Eostre "  changed  to  Christian  uses. 
The  fires  of  All  hallows  Eve  are  the  old  ''  Bel- 
tein,"  or  Baal  fires  which  probably  came  from 
Phoenicia  and  were  lighted  long  before  the  time 
of  Christ;  and  even  Christmas  itself,  which  we 
think  our  most  peculiarly  Christian  festival,  was 
not  fixed  upon  from  any  real  belief  that  Christ 


ANYTHING    NEW    IN    CHRISTIANITY?  I7I 

was  actually  borfi  then,  but  grew  out  of  the  al- 
most world-wide  festivals  for  the  brightening 
light  and  lengthening  days  after  the  winter 
solstice,  which  seemed  peculiarly  appropriate 
to  associate  with  the  coming  of  the  great 
light  of  Christ;  and  as  for  our  Christmas  cus- 
toms, we  get  our  mistletoe  from  the  Druids,  and 
the  Yule  log  from  the  Teutons,  and  our  present- 
giving  from  the  Saturnalia  of  Ancient  Rome. 
Nay,  to  go  into  deeper  things,  even  in  what  passes 
for  Christian  doctrine,  some  has  come  from 
quite  other  sources,  and  often  it  would  have  been 
a  great  deal  better  if  it  had  not !  All  that  imag- 
ery of  Hell.  e.  g.  was  not  any  special  teaching 
of  Christ's.  It  was  just  the  popular  imagery 
which  has  been  in  use  for  centuries.  What  Christ 
made  new  about  it  was  this:  That  while  his 
people  said,  ''  Those  Hells  are  for  the  Gentiles  " 
—  He  said,  ''  No !  they  are  for  the  evil,  the  self- 
ish, the  impure  —  Jews,  just  as  much  as  Gen- 
tiles." Nay  —  the  very  doctrine  of  The  Trin- 
ity, w^as  not  some  new  revelation  of  his  about 
God.  It  was  only  brought  into  Christianity  long 
afterwards,  a  mere  distortion  of  the  pure  mono- 
theism of  Christ,  derived  directly  from  Neo- 
platonism  and  back  of  that,  from  the  old  Poly- 
theisms and  triads  of  Greece  and  Egypt. 

Even  in  the  moral  and  spiritual  realm,  indeed, 


1J2  ANYTHING   NEW    IN    CHRISTIANITY? 

something  of  the  same  kind  is  true.  It  is  difficult 
anywhere  to  draw  any  absolute  line  between  what 
Christ  introduced  and  what  men  had  thought 
and  felt  before.  One  of  the  early  English  Free- 
thinkers —  Matthew  Tindal  —  entitled  his  chief 
work  "  Christianity  as  old  as  Creation  "  —  and 
the  thought  was  a  true  one.  The  divine  relations 
and  the  human  duties  which  the  Gospel  impresses 
and  lights  up,  were  as  old  as  creation.  God 
was  as  truly  the  Heavenly  Father,  men  were 
brothers,  right  was  right,  in  the  flint  age,  as  to- 
day. Yes,  and  not  only  these  things  were  so, 
but  some  men  had  glimpses  of  them.  Long  be- 
fore Christ,  great  souls  were  groping  their  way 
towards  them.  Here  and  there,  in  ancient  re- 
ligions, you  come  upon  sayings  and  precepts 
which  are  curiously  like  teachings  of  the  Gos- 
pel. But  what  then?  What  is  there,  that  is 
wholly  new?  America  had  been  discovered  be- 
fore Columbus,  and  steam  before  Watt.  But  that 
does  not  lessen  our  debt  to  those  who  made 
America  an  actual  living  place  for  men,  and 
steam  an  effective  force.  And  so  with  what 
Christianity  has  done  for  mankind.  Even  if 
every  one  of  its  great  moral  and  religious  ideas 
were  in  the  world  before  —  not  the  less  is  there  a 
wonderful  newness  in  the  place  into  which  Christ 
lifted  them,  and  the  power  which  he  gave  to  them. 


ANYTHING   NEW    IN    CHRISTIANITY?  I73 

There  is  a  passage  in  Dr.  Martineau's  "  Ethics 
of  Christendom "  which  brings  out  the  broad 
outHnes  of  this,  so  forcibly,  that  though  it  must 
be  already  familiar  to  many,  I  must  venture  to 
quote  it :  — 

"  Everyone  is  sensible  of  a  change  in  the  whole 
climate  of  thought  and  feeling,  the  moment  he 
crosses  any  part  of  the  boundary  which  divides 
Christian  civilization  from  Heathendom.  That 
(new)  type  is  so  strikingly  original,  its  features 
so  conspicuously  express  an  order  of  passions 
and  ideas  strange  alike  to  the  Greek  and  Italian 
races,  as  to  betray  the  creative  action  of  some 
vast  moral  power,  unborrowed  from  the  estab- 
lished civilization."  And  he  continues  —  "  It 
seems  an  idle  question  for  sceptical  criticism  to 
raise,  whether  the  religion  of  Christ  comprised 
in  its  teachings  any  element  absolutely  new.  If 
genius  had  conceived  it  all  before,  life  had  not 
produced  it  until  now;  and  the  more  you  affirm 
the  Philosophers'  competency  to  think  it,  the 
more  do  you  convict  them  of  inability  to  realise 
it." 

There  is  the  general  change  which  Christian- 
ity produced.  But  let  us  analyse  it  more  closely. 
I  think  it  is  possible  to  distinguish  some  of  the 
particular  elements,  both  of  Religion  and  of 
morals,  which  if  not  new,  came  out  in  a  new  char- 


174  ANYTHING   NEW    IN    CHRISTIANITY? 

acter  through  Christ's  influence  and  teaching. 
Take  for  instance,  the  thoughts  of  God,  and  of 
Prayer,  and  of  ImmortaHty.  I  know  these  were 
not  new  with  Christianity,  but  certainly  in  Chris- 
tianity they  take  on  quite  a  new  tenderness  and 
nearness. 

That  teaching  of  God  as  the  Heavenly  Father ; 
—  Certainly  God  had  been  called  '*  Father  "  be- 
fore Christ's  time.  It  is  beautiful  to  find  that  the 
very  first  word  for  God  among  our  old  Aryan 
forefathers  in  Central  Asia,  as  we  spell  out  their 
thought  in  the  old  Vedic  hymns,  was  ''  Dyaus- 
Pithar  "  —  Heaven-Father,  and  this  reappears  in 
the  ''  Zeus-Pater  "  of  the  Greeks,  and  the  **  Ju- 
piter "  of  the  Romans.  And  this  stood,  undoubt- 
edly, for  a  thought  of  mighty  beneficent  sover- 
eignty over  the  world  —  but  it  did  not  stand  for 
that  close,  tender,  personal  relation  in  which, 
through  the  Christian  centuries,  people  have 
loved  that  word  of  Christ  *'  Father  in  Heaven." 
It  might  be  the  germ  of  that,  but  it  was  not 
that.  **  Heavenly  Father  "  as  Christ  said  it,  and 
as  every  little  child  may  learn  to  say  it,  and  feel 
it,  now,  is  something  new,  something  different 
from  anything  that  men  felt  before. 

So  again  of  communion  between  God  and  man. 
I  do  not  claim  that  the  term  '*  Holy  Spirit '' 
stands  for  something  absolutely  new.     Men  had 


ANYTHING    NEW    IN    CHRISTIANITY?  I75 

prayed  before,  and  every  religion  had  believed 
in  some  form  of  divine  inspiration.  But  they 
had  believed  in  such  divine  guidance  and  help  for 
a  few  exceptional  souls,  specially  favoured  ones. 
Nowhere  comes  out  as  in  Christianity  the  faith 
in  the  Spirit  of  God  as  an  influence  open  to  all. 
And  Christianity  teaches  it  as  so  tender  an  in- 
fluence! Perhaps  the  nearest  to  what  Paul  felt 
as  being  "  led  by  the  spirit "  and  *'  constrained 
by  the  spirit ''  to  say  this,  or  to  do  that,  is  what 
Socrates  felt  —  that  inner  light  which  he  speaks 
of  as  his  "  Daemon  "  —  or  "  Guardian  Spirit  " ; 
but  the  "  Daemon  "  of  Socrates  was  a  purely  intel- 
lectual guidance,  while  the  Holy  Spirit  is  the 
helper  to  moral  strength,  and  especially  "  The 
comforter."  I  hardly  think  that  in  the  whole 
range  of  religion,  outside  Christianity,  you  could 
find  such  an  expression  as  that  "  Grieve  not  the 
Holy  Spirit  of  God."  And  so  in  the  humbler 
ranges  of  Communion  with  God.  Prayer  has 
been  a  new  thing  to  the  human  heart  since  Christ 
came;  something  nearer  and  tenderer;  less  of 
the  humble  petition  to  an  almighty  king,  more 
of  the  happy  confidence  of  the  little  child  talking 
to  a  Father  or  Mother. 

So,  of  Immortality ;  of  course  it  was  not  a  new 
belief,  and  yet  it  certainly  began  at  once  to  take, 
among   the   early    Christians,    a    very    different 


176  ANYTHING   NEW   IN    CHRISTIANITY? 

place  from  what  it  ever  seems  to  have  done  be- 
fore. Before,  it  had  practically  been  an  excep- 
tional glorification  for  sages  or  heroes;  for  all 
else,  a  far  off,  faint,  shadowy,  washed  out  life, 
nothing  like  as  real  and  substantial  as  the  life  of 
earth.  But,  at  once  in  Christianity,  you  see  an 
entirely  new  feeling  about  it.  It  is  a  happy 
home-like  world,  close  upon  this  present;  a  life 
—  not  faded  or  shadowy,  but  like  the  present  life 
only  glorified,  and  more  intensely  real.  And, 
from  that  time,  to  all  the  best  Christian  life, 
the  thought  of  the  Heavenly  world  has  been  that 
of  something  very  close  and  dear  and  beautiful. 

Turn  now  to  the  Moral  side  of  Christianity, 
and  you  find  the  same  thing.  Of  course  its  car- 
dinal moral  ideas  were  none  of  them  absolutely 
new.  Three  hundred  years  before  Christ,  Aris- 
totle had  written :  —  ''In  all  times  men  have 
praised  honesty,  moral  purity  and  beneficence. 
In  all  times  they  have  protested  against  mur- 
der, adultery,  perjury,  and  all  kinds  of  vice." 
And  yet  there  was  something  new.  The  moral 
life  which  was  developed  in  the  early  Chris- 
tion  communities,  the  moral  life  which  you 
find  struggling  upwards  through  the  Chris- 
tian ages,  is  something  different  from  what  was 
in  the  world  before.  It  is  at  once  intenser,  and 
more   inspiring  —  and   I   think,   more  brotherly 


ANYTHING    NEW    IN    CHRISTIANITY?  1 77 

and  loving.  Take  the  sense  of  sin  for  example. 
You  find  before  Christianity,  in  the  Greek  Trage- 
dies, e.g.,  terrible  remorse  for  great  crimes,  — 
but  that  sorrowful  sense  of  sinfulness  in  the 
presence  of  the  pure  holiness  of  God  —  that 
which  has  been  intensely  characteristic  of  the 
more  earnest  side  of  Christian  life  —  that  is  a 
new  thing!  And  that  sense  of  Duty  as  an  in- 
finite self-consecration,  that  longing  and  striving 
for  perfectness ;  —  the  best  life  of  the  Christian 
ages,  has,  as  Martineau  puts  it,  been  "  one  long 
sigh  after  an  unattained  perfection  "  —  I  do  not 
say  that  amounts  to  a  great  element,  but  it  is 
certainly  a  new  element  in  the  religion  of  man- 
kind. 

Similarly  it  is,  with  brotherhood  and  mutual 
kindness  and  helpfulness,  in  Christianity.  There 
was  something  of  brotherhood  before,  but  it  has 
been  wider  and  tenderer,  since.  ''  Philanthropy  '' 
is  not  an  original  Christian  word,  but  in  its 
larger  sense,  it  is  an  original  Christian  thing. 
In  the  old  world,  it  merely  meant  personal,  pri- 
vate kindness  or  courtesy  —  and  of  that  there 
was  plenty  in  the  world  before  Christ,  but  "  Phil- 
anthropy "  as  a  large  clear  duty  of  man  to 
care  for  his  brother  man  —  "  Philanthropy  "  as 
one  of  the  wide  spread  efforts  of  organised  so- 
ciety, that  is  a  new  thing.    Of  course,  Christian- 


178  ANYTHING    NEW    IN    CHRISTIANITY? 

ity  has  not  changed  the  world  to  its  higher,  wider 
thought  of  brotherhness.  There  has  continued 
to  be  plenty  of  pride,  plenty  of  caste-feeling, 
plenty  of  oppression,  and  a  great  deal  even  of 
actual  slavery.  That  is  only  the  common  ground 
of  human  history.  The  new  thing,  is,  that  ever 
since  Christ  came,  the  thought  and  spirit  with 
which  he  somehow  touched  men,  has  protested 
against  all  this,  has  kept  striving  to  modify  it, 
has  kept  up  a  standing  effort,  never  entirely 
given  up,  even  in  the  darkest  ages  always  break- 
ing out  again  —  a  standing  effort  after  the  truer, 
kindlier  relation  of  human  beings,  which  Chris- 
tianity had  taught. 

And  finally  there  is  one  direction  which  this 
higher  human  brotherhness  has  taken,  which  I 
think  is  entirely  new  with  Christ  and  Christian- 
ity. I  mean  the  special  anxiety  for  the  sinful; 
and  the  loving,  patient  endeavour  to  save  them 
from  the  sad,  lost  state  of  sin.  The  old  Greek 
poet  got  so  far  as  to  say  —  "  No  man  is  a  stranger 
to  me  provided  he  is  a  good  man."  Christ  first 
taught  men  to  feel  that  the  bad  man  also  is  a 
brother,  the  lost  w^oman  a  sister,  to  be  sought, 
and  loved,  and  helped  back.  Many  of  the  great 
ancients  got  so  far  as  to  say  that  a  magnani- 
mous soul  should  forgive  one  who  injures  him; 
Christ  teaches  that  we  should  try  to  do  him  good ! 


ANYTHING   NEW    IN    CHRISTIANITY?  1 79 

Possibly  you  may  find  a  thought  Hke  this  here 
and  there  in  the  older  world,  but  Christ  has  made 
this  a  large,  effective  part  of  the  organised  life 
of  Christendom.  Of  course  in  this  too,  our  ac- 
tual lags  far  away  behind  the  ideal.  We  can- 
not look  on  the  state  of  thousands  in  our  great 
cities,  without  feeling  sad,  it  is  so  little  that  we 
seem  to  do,  to  rescue  them  and  make  them  bet- 
ter. True!  But  it  is  something  that  Christian- 
ity makes  us  sad  for  this;  that  it  makes  us  feel 
that  it  is  our  concern;  that  it  so  makes  men  feel 
this,  as  to  shape  the  doings  of  society,  to  make 
new  issues  of  helpfulness  in  legislation,  and  to 
introduce  new  reformative  elements  into  the  ad- 
ministration of  justice;  and  that  thus,  age  after 
age,  it  keeps  the  most  earnest  life  of  Christen- 
dom to  this  distinctly  new  effort  to  save  the 
world,  and  to  save  the  lowliest  soul  in  it,  from 
sin. 

There,  then,  is  what  Christianity  has  contrib- 
uted of  new  to  the  higher  life  of  mankind.  You 
see,  I  have  not  made  any  extravagant  claim  — 
and  yet,  when  you  consider  it,  what  a  gain  it  is. 
For  it  is  —  a  clear  advance  along  the  whole  line 
both  of  divine  relations  and  human  relations.  On 
the  old  fundamental  religious  thoughts  —  of  God, 
and  Prayer,  and  Immortality,  a  new  light  of 
close  tender,  happy,  homelike  feeling;  along  the 


l8o  ANYTHING   NEW    IN    CHRISTIANITY? 

line  of  human  Duty  and  Morality,  a  new  as- 
piration and  restless  striving  after  goodness;  a 
wider,  more  inclusive  brotherhood;  and  this  one 
entirely  new  element,  of  anxiety  to  draw  the 
lost  and  sinful  back  into  the  happy  family  of 
God. 

I  know  that  I  have  been  speaking  all  through 
more  of  what  Christ  has  put  into  man's  thought, 
than  of  anything  that  has  yet  got  built  up  into 
Man's  organic,  social  living.  So  be  it.  But  it 
is  thought  which  in  the  end  rules  the  world. 
Christianity  is  still,  much  of  it,  only  a  prophecy, 
—  but  it  is  a  prophecy  which  ever  holds  to  its 
aims  the  best  minds  and  hearts;  and  instead  of 
feeling,  as  some  do,  that  we  have  about  come 
to  the  end  of  it,  I  feel  more  and  more  that  we 
are  still  only  at  the  beginning  of  its  onward  way, 
and  only  at  the  beginning  also,  of  its  marvellous 
influences  that  help  mankind  along  that  onward 
way.  Perhaps  it  seems  pretty  far  along  in  his- 
tory to  talk  of  Christianity  as  only  at  its  begin- 
ning. And  yet  what  else  is  it  with  all  the  devel- 
opment of  man?  Only  along  the  thousands  of 
years  do  we  see  any  sign  of  steady  gain.  It  is 
everything  to  find  some  living  spirit  and  influ- 
ence for  onward  higher  life.  And  that  we  have, 
in  Christ :  and  so  the  true  thing  is,  to  hold  to  that 
living  influence  and  to  all  that  keeps  it  most  liv- 


ANYTHING   NEW    IN    CHRISTIANITY?  l8l 

ing  in  our  hearts  and  among  men  —  and  even 
though  it  seems  as  yet  to  have  brought  us  no  fur- 
ther than  what,  in  the  Hght  of  the  highest,  are 
still  but  beginning;  still,  we  must  hold  to  it,  and 
keep  the  closest  to  it  that  we  can,  and  trust  that, 
somehow,  God  is  leading  on  the  world,  to  His 
own  perfect  end. 


ALL  THINGS  —  BEGINNINGS 

The  spirit  of  Christianity  is  that  of  a  dim, 
but  confident  onlook  to  great  possibilities  for 
this  poor  human  nature  of  ours.  "  Beloved,  now 
are  we  the  sons  of  God.  And  it  doth  not  yet 
appear  what  we  shall  be."  In  a  w^ord,  we  are 
merely  at  the  beginnings,  yet  even  so  are  the 
objects  of  a  divine  love  and  care,  children  of 
God,  inheritors  of  the  promises,  with  vague  glory- 
flashes  of  Prophecy  always  lighting  up  the  fu- 
ture. 

It  is  that  subject,  —  Beginnings  —  that  I  want 
to  dwell  upon.  The  more  I  think  of  it,  the  more 
it  seems  to  open  out  to  larger  and  larger  mean- 
ings, touching  not  man  alone,  but  all  the  mighty 
world,  until  its  has  come  to  seem  one  of  the  great 
explanatory  words  which  unlock  the  meaning  of 
the  world  and  life,  that,  after  all,  we  are  only 
at  the  beginning  of  things.  And  it  is  a  thought 
which  has  seemed  to  whisper  patience  and  cour- 
age in  the  midst  of  the  perplexity  and  confu- 
sion of  the  world.     For,  look  at  things  for  what 

183 


184  ALL  THINGS  —  BEGINNINGS 

they  now  are  and  there  is  plenty  of  discord,  some- 
times things  which  might  almost  drive  us  to 
despair  —  things  that  shock  and  horrify  us,  and 
set  one  asking  *'  can  God  be  good  and  such  things 
be?"  And  I  do  not  say  it  makes  all  clear  to 
say  —  '*  Beginnings,  things  are  only  in  their  be- 
ginnings," but  it  makes  it  a  little  easier  to  be- 
lieve that  things  may  be  working  right,  after 
all,  and  so,  easier  to  watch  and  wait,  and  still  to 
cleave  to  faith,  amid  whatever  darkness  there  may 
be. 

And  I  think  two  things  help  us  to  this  thought 
of  all  things  being  only  beginnings:  one,  from 
science,  the  observation  of  outward  nature;  the 
other  from  religion,  taking  that  as  summing  up 
the  suggestions  and  intuitions  which  come  to 
us  from  our  inward  nature.  Outward  Nature 
shews  us  a  vast  past  —  ever  vaster  —  of  Evolu- 
tion, slow  developments,  from  beginnings  which 
look  chaotic,  to  gradually  higher  forms  first  of 
organism,  then  of  life.  Then  as  soon  as  we  have 
come  to  man,  a  new  process  begins,  and  his  in- 
stincts or  intuitions,  what  you  will,  take  up 
man's  thinking,  his  dim  feeling  of  something  be- 
yond, towards  a  limitless  future.  And  the  great 
progressive  meaning  of  the  first  process,  seems 
to  give  us  the  master  thought  of  the  whole.  Be- 
cause, the  world  is  not  an  incoherent  world,  all 


ALL  THINGS  —  BEGINNINGS  185 

in  confusion.  From  the  first  grouping  of  its 
atoms,  order  is  everywhere.  And  with  such  per- 
fect order  at  the  basis  of  things,  can  we  think 
of  less  order  in  their  outcome.  So  we  are  brought 
to  man,  and  what  his  Hfe  and  being  are  coming 
to.  It  seems  to  have  been  the  crown  of  all  that 
long  unfolding,  when  man's  rude  consciousness 
of  Being,  leaped  up  into  the  further  consciousness 
of  more  life  to  come.  At  first  it  might  be  only 
of  some  future  of  retribution,  and  that,  widening 
out  into  the  idea  of  the  better  life  going  on  to 
perfection;  but  as  you  take  in  the  significance 
indeed  of  life  to  come,  there  is  no  stopping  in  it, 
anywhere ;  and  so  it  has  led  men  on  —  not  all 
men  perhaps,  but  the  highest  thinkers  —  on  and 
on  —  gradually  brushing  aside  all  halting  theo- 
ries of  finalities,  last  days,  grand  windings  up 
of  providence  and  judgment,  —  until  we  are 
brought  to  such  sense  as  I  am  trying  to  shape 
out,  of  how  we  are  still  only  as  it  were  at  the 
beginning  of  things  —  and  all  things,  begin- 
nings. 

Let  me  just  remind  you,  in  passing,  that  this 
thought  of  vast  futures  and  possibilities  of  Prog- 
ress does  not  in  any  way  weaken  the  moral  force 
of  the  other  thought  of  retribution.  That  idea 
of  the  moral  sequences  of  life,  is  true  —  one  of 
the  deep  fundamental  laws  of  being,  — 


l86  ALL  THINGS  —  BEGINNINGS 

"  Our  past  still  travels  with  us  from  afar 

"  And  what  we  have  been,  makes  us  what  we  are." 

Yes,  that  is  part  of  God's  great  truth,  and  part 
which  does  not  wait  for  the  great  "  judgment " 

—  or,  truer,  as  Paul  calls  it ''  Revelation  of  Judg- 
ment," in  going  on  into  the  life  beyond.  Each 
day,  here,  is  partly  a  judgment  on  yesterday; 
this  year  or  last  year.  Manhood  is  partly  a  judg- 
ment on  youth;  old  age,  is  partly  a  judgment 
on  full  life.  And  so  the  future  life  is  a  judgment 
on  this.  But  still  —  surely  it  is  not  judgment 
only.  In  all  these  successions  of  life,  the 
future  brings  not  only  something  of  judgment 
on  the  past,  but  also  something  of  new  im- 
pulse, and  new  opportunity.  There  comes  in 
one  of  the  openings  of  further  truth  that  Christ 
did  not  enter  upon,  hardly  more  than  hinted  at 

—  the  ultimate  possibilities  of  poor,  sinful,  un- 
developed life,  in  the  Infinite  future  —  But  he 
left  it  lying  not  in  darkness,  but  in  the  great 
enfolding  light  of  a  Father's  love,  and  it  is  in 
the  light  of  that  love  that  it  is  so  helpful  to  look 
on,  remembering  that  all  things  are  beginnings. 

But  while  this  thought  does  not  really  les- 
sen that  great  truth  of  moral  retribution  on  which 
Christianity  laid  such  stress,  what  a  new  light  of 
hope  and  emphasis  it  throws  on  so  much  of  the 


ALL  THINGS BEGINNINGS  187 

onward  looking  of  human  Philosophy  and  Re- 
ligion. *'  The  world  is  a  becoming  "  said  Her- 
aclitus.  It  is  often  hard  to  believe  —  the  move- 
ment seems,  in  many  parts  of  the  world,  so  slow ! 
Yet  in  the  larger  stir  and  movement  of  man- 
kind the  trend  is  unmistakeable.  The  good,  the 
wise  are  not  mere  incidents  but  prophecies.  The 
Bible  pages  glow  with  words  of  splendid  faith 
in  some  greater  destiny  for  man.  All  higher 
approach  to  God,  seemed  promises  of  what  all 
might  become.  "  Would  that  all  the  Lord's  peo- 
ple were  prophets !  "  cried  Moses  —  and  Joel  said 
that  in  the  last  days,  they  should  be.  The  very 
note  of  all  Christ's  gospel  was  that  all  were  chil- 
dren of  the  Infinite  Father !  And  the  VIII.  chap- 
ter of  Romans,  —  the  greatest  chapter  of  Paul's 
greatest  epistle  —  is  all  alive  and  glowing  with 
the  thought  of  a  Creation  struggling  upwards, 
all  the  world's  groaning  and  seemingly  chaotic 
evil,  simply  the  travailing  of  Nature  for  the  new 
birth  of  a  redeemed  humanity.  And  so  comes 
in  that  key-word  of  John's,  ''  Now  are  we  the 
children  of  God,"  he  says,  now,  even  now,  in 
this  poor,  weak,  sinful,  stage  of  us  — "  and  it 
doth  not  yet  appear  what  we  shall  be,"  only  in 
that  greater  life  in  which  Christ  was  and  the 
saints,  we,  too,  "  should  be  like  him,"  the  per- 
fectest  thing  that  they  could  think  of.      It  is 


l88  ALL  THINGS  —  BEGINNINGS 

these  great  thoughts,  which  have  gradually 
worked  upon  the  hearts  of  Christian  thinkers, 
quenched  all  narrow  dogmas  of  election,  made 
the  idea  of  any  being  finally  "  lost,"  more  and 
more  impossible  in  the  universe  of  a  God  of  love, 
and  set  the  key-note  of  the  gospel  of  Universal 
hope:  and  it  is  this  thought  which,  the  more 
we  follow  it  out,  means,  that  all  this  life  now 
and  here,  is  mere  beginning. 

"  All  things  beginnings."  I  think  it  throws  a 
larger  light  on  Nature,  and  larger  still  upon 
human  nature,  on  all  the  great  human  world. 
Why,  even  in  the  very  knowledge  of  our 
time  —  this  wonderful  science,  —  it  is  constantly 
forced  upon  us  that  with  all  the  progress 
men  have  made,  we  are  still  only  at  the  begin- 
ning. We  are  just  getting  glimpses  even  in  this 
very  time,  of  facts  and  forces,  and  a  whole  realm 
of  wonder,  utterly  undreamed  of  as  late  as  when 
we  elders  were  children.  We  have  passed  behind 
the  visible  and  the  tangible,  into  a  world  within 
the  world.  We  are  hardly  more  than  peeping 
into  it  here  and  there,  at  a  few  points,  —  in  these 
**  X  "  Rays ;  and  this  electricity  that  passes  si- 
lently through  earth  or  stone  as  readily  as  along 
our  wires  —  and  all  the  mysteries  of  Biology  — 
but  what  a  wonder  realm  it  all  is,  and  even  these 
things  are  but  **  beginnings,"  and  I  think  the 


ALL  THINGS  —  BEGINNINGS  189 

whole  touches  our  hearts  with  a  new  awe,  as 
well  as  wonder.  But  it  is  not  in  the  qualities  and 
possibilities  of  the  material  universe  that  this 
thought  seems  to  come  most  strikingly,  but  in 
thinking  of  the  qualities  of  the  life  in  man.  I 
think  of  it  in  regard  to  friendship  and  love. 
*'  The  most  wonderful  thing  in  the  world  "  Henry 
Drummond  called  love.  And  here  and  there  men 
always  have  had  glimpses  of  what  it  might  be. 
Even  in  what  we  call  friendship  how  it  enriches 
life.  You  love  your  friend  so  that  you  would 
gladly  tread  the  paths  of  life  very  near  to  one 
another  —  fight  its  battle  as  comrades,  take  clos- 
est counsel  of  its  great  thoughts,  work  out  its 
problems  together  —  and  lo !  the  friction  of  for- 
tune and  the  compulsion  of  imperious  necessi- 
ties drift  you  apart;  and  one  of  you  may  have 
to  toil  along  in  a  London  counting  house,  and  the 
other  brings  up  in  some  lonely  up-country  sta- 
tion in  India  —  and  all  the  years  apart  you  never 
meet  another  friend  you  care  for  as  much;  and 
you  exchange  letters  now  and  then  —  but  what 
is  that  as  any  fulfilment  of  "  Friendship  "  ?  And 
once  in  many  years  perhaps,  you  meet,  and  you 
talk  of  the  old  times,  and  it  seems  so  good  to 
be  together  —  but  then  again  the  strokes  of  life 
beat  out  the  hour  of  parting  —  and  the  express 
moves  out,  or  the  ship  sails  away Is  that  the 


190  ALL  THINGS  —  BEGINNINGS 

world's  final  thing  in  friendship?  Rather,  a 
wonderful  glimpse  of  what  might  be  one  of  the 
most  blessed  things  in  life :  —  but  we  only  just 
touch  the  beginnings  of  it ! 

Or  take  that  closer,  intenser  friendship  we 
specially  call  love  —  so  constantly  ''beginning," 
hardly  a  life  without  some  beginning  some  time 
of  it  —  but  so  often  coming  to  nothing,  and  so 
often  draggling  down  into  mere,  commonplace 
living  together,  or  degraded  by  the  sway  of  poor, 
base  passions;  or  getting  into  inextricable  tangle 
with  the  very  institutions  which  itself  has  caused; 
and  even  when  it  does  seem  as  if  it  came  to  its 
purest  and  its  best  —  something  that  should  last 
for  ever  —  then,  by  and  by  —  the  inevitable  part- 
ing !  —  and,  what  beyond  ?  Ah !  who  shall  solve 
the  meaning  of  all  this  ?  I  know  not ;  —  but  it 
comforts  me  to  hear  this  thought  whispering  it- 
self to  me  —  "  We  are  but  at  the  beginnings  of 
things !  "  I  know  not  how  it  may  all  be  —  but  a 
thought  comes,  in  such  a  word  as  Emerson's :  — ■ 

"  What  is  excellent, 

"  As  God  lives  is  permanent." 

And  so  it  is  again,  —  constantly  the  same  kind 
of  perplexity,  but  ever  the  same  refuge,  in  all 
the  moral  tangle  and  incompleteness  of  the  world. 
Even  in  the  very  elements  of  moral  life  at  all,  the 


ALL  THINGS  —  BEGINNINGS  IQI 

perplexity  haunts  us.  Why,  what  is  "  sin  "  ?  We 
seem,  at  times,  to  have  some  clear  knowledge  of 
it.  We  repeat  the  commandments,  noting  how 
in  the  main  essentials,  they  are  so  alike  among 
all  peoples;  and  yet  what  is  it  makes  the  wrong 
thing  wrong,  and  makes  it  wrong  to  do  it  how- 
ever much  it  gives  us  some  great  pleasure,  or 
seems  to  offer  relief  from  some  great  palpable 
trouble?  We  cannot  tell,  or  at  least  it  is  very 
easy  to  confuse  ourselves  even  when  the  telling 
has  seemed  clearest!  and  so  the  world  is  full  of 
palpable  vices,  and  overwhelming  wrongs,  and 
horrors  that  seem  rather  reversions  to  the  Ape 
and  Tiger,  than  to  come  in  any  line  of  progress 
we  can  trace.  And  even  where  we  seem  to  trace 
a  little  progress,  what  does  it  amount  to?  Here 
in  this  civilized  England  what  is  it  we  have  really 
attained?  Mere  hints  of  better  things  to  come 
—  always  with  an  underside  of  seething  want 
and  misery  and  passionate  revolt  against  the  pres- 
ent order  of  things,  which  touch  one  v/ith  the 
sense  of  how  poor  and  unsatisfying  it  all  is.  Yes, 
and  yet  all  through,  and  in  and  out  among  these 
confused  and  fragmentary  rights  and  wrongs, 
that  curious  sense  of  right,  that  longing  for  a 
better  nobler  world,  that  irrepressible  striving 
for  it,  that  reverence  for  those  who  in  spite 
of  temptation  keep  the  line  of  Duty. 


192  ALL  THINGS  —  BEGINNINGS 

As  I  walk  amidst  it  all,  it  still  keeps  coming 
to  me,  —  ''  Beginnings !  we  are  only  at  the  be- 
ginnings," we  are  only  at  the  beginning  of  this 
nature  of  ours,  only  at  the  beginning  of  this 
human  society,  for  which  our  very  Nature  com- 
pels us  to  strive,  but  from  which  the  best  that  we 
can  compass  seems  so  far!  Only  at  the  begin- 
ning of  ourselves!  God  help  us  if  it  were  not 
so,  if  the  better  thoughts  which  in  bright  mo- 
ments, lift  us  up  to  such  high  "  mounts  of  vision  " 
such  consciousness  of  what  Life  might  be  —  God 
help  us  indeed  if  the  significance  of  such  bet- 
ter times  is  measured  by  our  weakness  and  self- 
ishness, and  depths  of  conscious  evil  into  which 
we  sink  at  times.  But  then,  too,  comes  this 
thought  —  We  are  only  at  the  beginning ! 

What  is  the  upshot  of  it  all?  Any  clear  doc- 
trine taught,  any  exact  truth  that  science  or 
Theology  can  catalogue  among  its  facts  or 
truths?  No;  nothing  so  certain  and  defined  as 
that.  But  it  does  seem  to  me  a  thought  which 
widens  out  our  Theologies  and  all  the  thoughts 
which  men  have  shaped  into  their  doctrines  of 
last  things,  into  larger  meanings  of  Divine  Love 
and  endless  possibilities  of  hope.  It  helps  me  to 
look  upon  the  world,  and  on  every  poorest  life  in 
it,  with  a  little  less  heart-sinking  as  for  hope- 
less  failure.      I   see  an   idiot  child;   I  hear  the 


ALL  THINGS  —  BEGINNINGS  I93 

cursing  of  some  foul-mouthed  human  brute;  I 
see  the  poor,  bent  old  woman  whose  very  looks 
tells  of  a  stunted  life  of  coarse  and  sordid  toil; 
I  read  the  sad  statistics  of  pauperism  and  crime 
—  and  all  the  degradation  that  haunts  the  night- 
side  of  our  cities  —  I  read  the  story,  day  by  day, 
of  all  the  warring,  suffering,  sinning  world  — 
and  I  do  not  think  it  makes  one  feel  the  sad- 
ness of  it  less,  or  makes  one  less  anxious  to  do 
anything  to  help  it  wherever  one  can  reach  with 
any  touch  of  healing,  but  ever  the  thought  comes 
in  :  —  "  Beginnings ;  —  only  beginnings  "  and  I 
feel  a  little  less  dismay  —  a  little  more  trustful 
and  hopeful  of  some  ultimate  good.  I  feel  more 
sure  that  silently,  through  what  at  times  seems 
such  confusion,  —  an  order  is  working,  and  a 
Providence  of  goodness,  and  a  supreme  and  in- 
finite Wisdom. 


THE  VEILED  LIFE  IN  MAN 

Paul's  famous  saying  ''  Now  we  see  thro'  a 
glass  darkly  but  then,  face  to  face;  now  I  know 
in  part,  but  then  shall  I  know  even  as  also  I 
am  known "  is  commonly  quoted  as  a  saying 
about  religious  things,  —  of  how  we  see  such 
great  realities  as  God  and  eternity  only  as 
through  a  glass  darkly.  And  it  is  deeply  true 
that  way,  but  that  was  not  what  Paul  was  speak- 
ing of.  He  was  speaking  of  Man  and  how  Man 
is  only  darkly  seen  —  and  of  the  hidden  good 
in  man.  The  whole  chapter  is  about  "  charity." 
"  Love  "  the  revised  version  renders  it;  and  love 
is  the  commonest  translation  of  Paul's  word, 
and  yet  I  like  ''  charity "  better  here  for  it  is 
that  large  impersonal  kind  of  love,  which  Paul 
is  speaking  of  —  and  '^  charity  "  seems  to  express 
that  better  —  that  which  ''  hopeth  all  things  "  and 
''  believeth  all  things  "  —  not  just  of  those  we 
love.  And  this  is  his  closing  thought  about  such 
"  charity "  —  that  if  we  will  have  faith  for  it 
here,  if  we  will  keep  on  loving  our  fellow-crea- 

195 


196  THE   VEILED    LIFE    IN    MAN 

tures  even  when  we  cannot  see  much  in  them 
worth  loving  —  our  faith  shall  there  be  justi- 
fied; for  here  we  only  see  each  other  through 
a  glass  darkly,  but  there  face  to  face  —  and  there 
—  looking  ''  face  to  face,"  "  knowing  even  as 
we  are  known  "  we  shall  find  not  less  good  than 
we  thought,  but  more  good  than  earthly  charity 
ever  hoped. 

What  a  searching  thought  of  the  Hereafter  — ■ 
that  seeing  ''  face  to  face  "  —  and  yet  he  seems 
to  have  felt  it  a  large  hopeful  thought  too.  And 
Paul  was  no  easy-going  optimist.  He  saw  with 
terrible  clearness  the  sinful  side  of  human  na- 
ture; it  lay  right  about  him  in  those  old  Heathen 
cities  with  a  frightful  plainness;  and  yet  even 
Paul  with  his  clear  sight  of  it,  is  not  dismayed. 
Over  it  all,  he  sees  the  Love  of  God,  and  through 
it  all  he  sees  something  better  in  man,  and  so  he 
puts  it  that  there,  where  all  is  known,  there  where 
we  shall  judge  not  with  these  poor  childlike  judg- 
ments of  earth  —  there  will  be  more  to  love  than 
to  hate. 

But  the  larger,  general  thought  comes  first  — 
the  thought  of  what  a  veiled  hidden  life  this  is 
altogether  in  man  —  only  half  seen ;  —  it  may 
be  a  thought  of  charity  and  hope  —  in  the  end  of 
all  it  is ;  but  it  is  a  thought  with  a  great  deal  more 
in  it  than  that  —  a  great  deal  of  searching,  and 


THE   VEILED    LIFE    IN    MAN  I97 

awfulness,  and  even  dread,  before  we  get  to  the 
hope  and  the  charity. 

We  know  how  it  is,  when  we  think  about  it. 
Here  in  this  Hfe  we  do  see  each  other  only  ''  as 
through  a  glass  darkly."  The  word  was  even 
more  forcible  in  Paul's  day,  for  they  had  only 
poor,  clouded  glass,  or  talc  to  see  through  — 
which,  like  our  frosted  glass,  only  showed  the 
vaguest  image  of  the  person  behind  it.  And 
is  not  that  about  how  we  see  people?  The  flesh 
acts  as  a  veil  to  the  spirit.  Pass  along  the  street. 
Look  in  the  faces  of  those  whom  you  meet.  How 
many  of  them  can  you  read  at  all?  There  you 
see  one  whose  face  repels  you  —  telling  some 
unmistakable  story  of  self-indulgence,  avarice  or 
cruelty,  and  yet  perhaps  only  half  telling  it! 
There,  again,  is  one  whom  at  a  glance  we  feel 
we  should  like  to  know  —  a  face  with  the  lines 
of  high-thought  on  it,  or  the  look  of  goodness, 
or  an  earnest  capable  manhood  born  of  struggle 
and  endeavour.  Yet  even  with  these  you  only  get 
the  faintest  outline  of  the  life  within,  and  with 
the  vast  majority  of  faces  you  do  not  get  even 
that.  And  yet  every  one  of  the  thousands  whom 
you  meet  has  an  inner  life  —  an  inner  life  like 
no  one  else's  —  an  inner  life  story,  stranger  than 
any  fiction  if  it  should  be  truly  told. 

Nay,  it  is  so  even  with  those  whom  you  think 


198  THE   VEILED    LIFE    IN    MAN 

you  know.  Do  you  know  them?  There  are 
some  perhaps  with  whom  the  ordinary  disguises 
of  the  world  are  laid  aside.  You  know  them, 
and  they  you  —  thoroughly!  And  yet  is  it  so? 
You  go  a  good  way  in,  in  that  intimacy,  but  not 
to  the  innermost.  You  talk  of  very  deep  ex- 
periences —  but  even  those  dressed  up  a  little  — 
and  not  of  the  very  deepest.  You  confess  your 
weaknesses — do  you  ever  tell  all  ?  Hardly !  There 
is  an  innermost  self  knowledge  into  which  no 
other  may  come.  Does  a  man  ever  tell  how  near 
he  has  sometimes  come  to  black  ugly  sins  that 
no  one  dreams  of  suspecting  —  or  perhaps  how 
he  has  passed  the  line  —  done  something  that  can 
never  be  undone  through  all  eternity  ?  From  this 
side  of  our  now  seeing  and  being  seen  only  ^'  as 
through  a  glass  darkly  "  pass  on  to  that  "  face 
to  face."  It  is  not  Paul's  thought  alone!  It 
is  part  of  the  very  instinct  which  sets  man  look- 
ing on  to  further  life,  that  there  we  shall  all  be 
seen  as  we  are!  All  the  great  interpreters  of 
that  silent  word  of  God  which  shapes  itself 
through  man's  holiest  thoughts  —  all  teach  this, 
that  all  this  mask  and  disguise  is  only  of  the  pres- 
ent and  the  outward  and  the  earth.  There  we 
pass  out  of  the  twilight  into  the  open  day.  There 
every  soul  must  appear  not  as  it  wishes  to  be, 
not  as  on  earth  it  has  tried  to  appear,  and  per- 


THE   VEILED   LIFE   IN    MAN  I99 

haps  succeeded  in  appearing,  but  as  it  is!  Well 
might  Christ  say  —  "  Many  that  are  first  shall 
be  last!" 

This  is  a  thought  of  awe  —  this  of  our  lives 
lying  open  to  the  gaze  of  others.  But  I  do  not 
know  if  it  is  not  almost  more  awful  still  to  think 
how  we  shall  see  ourselves,  there,  with  perfect 
truth.  Perhaps  the  most  terrible  power  of  de- 
ception we  possess,  is  that  of  deluding  our- 
selves. Carlyle  says  that  the  worst  kind  of 
cant  is  that  of  people  who  have  talked  cant 
till  they  have  come  to  believe  in  it  and  to 
feel  a  sort  of  sincerity  in  it.  So  people 
sometimes  talk  about  religion  and  busy  them- 
selves over  its  forms  and  observances  and  the 
externalities  of  Religion,  till  they  come  to  fancy 
themselves  really  religious !  So  a  man  may  give, 
right  and  left,  and  feed  upon  the  cheap  praise  of 
his  generosity  until  he  verily  believes  himself  a 
really  benevolent  character.  Yet  shall  we  throw 
stones  at  these?  Don't  we  all  delude  ourselves 
to  some  extent  in  the  same  fashion?  Don't  we 
salve  over  the  ugly  spots,  and  magnify  the  little 
good  things  we  have  to  show?  Yes!  We  do 
it  now  —  but  it  will  be  impossible,  then!  I 
think  that  is  one  of  the  most  awful  thoughts 
of  the  life  to  come,  more  awful  —  when  you 
really  face  it  —  than  any  images  of  outward  fire 


200  THE   VEILED   LIFE   IN    MAN 

or  pain?  Do  you  remember  how  the  thought 
is  worked  out  in  that  Httle  poem  of  one  sitting 
**  alone  with  conscience  "  ? 

I  sat  alone  with  my  conscience 
In  a  place  where  time  had  ceased, 
And  we  talked  of  my  former  living 
In  the  land  where  the  years  increased. 
And  I  felt  I  should  have  to  answer 
The  question  it  put  to  me, — 
And  to  face  the  answer,  and  question, — 
Through  all  eternity. 

The  ghosts  of  forgotten  actions 

Came  floating  before  my  sight, 

And  things  that  I  thought  were  dead  things 

Were  alive  with  a  terrible  might; 

And  the  vision  of  all  my  past  life 

Was  an  awful  thing  to  face — 

Alone  with  my  conscience  sitting 

In  that  solemnly  silent  place. 

:((  3|c  9|e  9|e  3)c 

And   I   thought   of   my   former   thinking 
Of  the  judgment  day  to  be; 
But   sitting   alone   with   my   conscience 
Seemed  judgment  enough  for  me ! 

***** 
And  I  felt  that  the  future  was  present. 
And  the  present  would  never  go  by, 
For  it  was  but  the  thought  of  my  past  life 
Grown  into  eternity. 


THE  VEILED   LIFE   IN    MAN  201 

Then  I  woke  from  my  timely  dreaming 

And  the  vision  passed  away; 

And  I  knew  that  the  far-away  warning 

Was  a  warning  for  to-day. 

***** 

And  so  I  sit,  now,  with  my  conscience 

In  the  place  where  the  years  increase, 

And  I  try  to  remember  the  future 

And  I  know — of  the  future  judgment — 

How  dreadful  so  e'er  it  be, 

That  to  sit  alone  with  my  conscience. 

Will  be  judgment  enough  for  me ! 

Ah!  And  yet,  by  God's  mercy,  not  that  for 
ever!  One  can  hardly  think  that  an  eternity  of 
remorseful  looking  back  is  the  best  thing  that 
God  has  in  store,  even  for  his  sinfullest  children. 
Still  —  that  is  in  it,  —  whatever  ultimate  hope 
opens  out  beyond  it,  and  if  it  is  an  awful  thought, 
it  is  also  a  wholesome  one.  If  there  is  anything 
in  you  that  you  would  dread  to  have  known,  and 
dread  to  face,  even  by  yourself  —  clear  it  away, 
now.  Yes,  even  though  it  be  like  cutting  off  a 
hand  or  plucking  out  an  eye.  Yes,  even  though 
clearing  it  away  mean  some  open  change,  and 
confession  and  shame,  —  that  was  a  deep  word 
of  Mohammed's  —  ''  Better  to  blush  in  this  world 
than  in  the  world  to  come  " ! 

It  was  not,  however,  for  these  thoughts  of 
warning  that  Paul  spoke  of  the  inner  life  being 


202  THE  VEILED  LIFE  IN  MAN 

seen  "  face  to  face  "  in  the  life  to  come  and  no 
longer  "  through  a  glass  darkly."  He  spoke  of 
it,  especially,  for  its  meaning  of  love  and  hope. 
If  there  is  worse  in  men  than  those  about  them 
know  —  perhaps  than  they  even  know  themselves 
—  what  is  specially  in  his  mind  is  that  there 
is  better,  too.  It  is  a  word  of  the  Infinite,  pa- 
tient, divine  Love,  and  of  how  our  love  should 
be  as  like  it  as  we  can  —  and  of  how,  in  the  end 
of  all,  that  love,  whether  divine  or  human,  that 
has  clung  to  the  good  in  men,  shall  be  justified. 
Sometimes  we  hardly  feel  as  if  it  could  be  so. 
We  see  people  who  appear  to  us  so  mean,  so  bad, 
so  lost  to  every  nobler  feeling  —  that  it  seems 
impossible  to  think  of  love  for  them.  And  when 
we  scorn  ourselves,  as  all  honest  souls  have  to  do 
at  times  —  for  some  hidden  baseness  —  we  feel 
as  if  —  should  that  be  unveiled  —  all  would 
scorn.  And  yet,  even  in  that  very  self-scorn,  if 
we  have  learned  at  all  Christ's  thought  of  the 
Heavenly  Father,  we  know  God  does  not  scorn 
us.  I  do  not  mean  that  we  learn  any  thought  of 
His  being  merely  what  some  one  has  called  "  a 
good  natured  God."  It  is  rather  the  sense  of 
an  Infinite  divine  Patience  —  a  love  which  never 
seems  to  change  or  tire  —  which  even  in  its 
sharpest  discipline  is  trying  to  do  us  good,  and 
which  will  have  us  saved  —  will  never  leave  us  to 


THE   VEILED    LIFE   IN    MAN  203 

have  peace  in  any  wrong  or  sin.  I  think  that 
is  the  love  which  Christ  touches  in  his  own 
love  for  the  poor,  weak  lives  about  him.  Even 
when  his  words  seem  to  us  most  scathing,  it  does 
not  follow  that  they  sounded  so  as  he  spoke  them. 
Some  one  objected  once  in  talking  to  Dr.  Chan- 
ning,  to  Christ's  denunciations  of  Woe  to  the 
Pharisees ;  they  were  so  harsh  and  fierce  he  said. 
Dr.  Channing  took  up  the  Testament  and  read 
them — that  terrible  rebuke  with  its  ever-recurring 
refrain  —  *'  Woe  unto  you  Pharisees !  "  —  and 
he  read  them,  in  the  light  of  his  own  feeling  of 
the  dignity  of  Man  and  of  the  infinite  sorrow 
that  it  is  when  man  sinks  all  away  from  it. 
"  Ah,"  said  the  objector  "  if  Christ  spoke  like 
that,  of  course  I  could  not  say  anything."  But 
was  not  that  just  how  he  did  speak !  And  so  in 
that  deep  word  of  St.  John's  —  "Even  if  our 
heart  condemns  us,  God  is  greater  than  our  heart 
and  knoweth  all  things " !  And  as  with  God 
so  with  those  who  see  with  the  cleared  sight 
of  His  heavenly  world.  —  As  Tennyson  says  — 

"  Ye    watch,    like    God,    the    rolling   hours 
With  larger,  other  eyes  than  ours, 
To  make  allowance  for  us  all." 

And  Father  Faber's  beautiful  word  comes  in  — 


204  THE  VEILED  LIFE  IN  MAN 

*'  There  is  no  place  where  earth's  sorrows 
Are  so  felt  as  up  in  Heaven: 
There  is  no  place  where  earth's  failings 
Have  such  kindly  judgment  given." 

Why,  our  own  poor  lives  in  their  best  hours 
might  teach  us  something  of  this.  We  feel  what 
it  is,  at  times,  to  have  the  thought  of  God's  will 
and  to  long  with  unutterable  longing  for  higher 
and  better  things ;  —  and  yet,  we  have  to  live 
out  our  lot  in  the  throng  of  the  world's  tempta- 
tions and  to  fight  down  our  passions,  and  to 
bear  up  against  the  wear  and  tear  and  burden  of 
life !  What  a  struggle !  Why,  I  fancy  that  even 
the  strongest  seldom  feels  that  he  comes  to  any 
victory.  And  what  must  it  be  then  to  the  weak,  to 
those  who  come  into  the  world  with  taint  of  temp- 
tation in  their  very  blood  —  or  with  some  great 
overmastering  passion  in  them  —  as  so  many 
do.  Or,  what  must  the  struggle  be  to  those  who 
have  that  curious  lack  you  often  see  of  any  force- 
ful will,  or  to  those  who  from  childhood  are 
trained  in  mean  and  frivolous  and  selfish  ways. 
God  be  patient  with  us  all,  and  help  us  to  be 
patient  with  each  other!  We  want  more  toler- 
ance. It  is  not  an  easy  world,  this,  even  for  the 
strong  —  but  what  is  it  for  the  weak?  This 
is  no  world  for  the  weak,  at  least  not  if  there 
is  no  mercy  or  help  but  man's.     For  the  world 


THE  VEILED  LIFE  IN  MAN  205 

is  hard  on  the  weak,  soon  tires  of  helping  them, 
soon  gives  them  up.  Is  it  not  because  we  see 
"  only  through  a  glass  darkly  "  ? 

"  What's  done  we  partly  may  compute 
But  know  not  what's  resisted." 

—  If  we  knew  all,  many  a  harsh  word  would 
be  checked.  And  so  that  saying  of  how  here 
we  see  each  other  only  through  a  glass  darkly 
is  a  word  not  only  of  hope  for  the  life  beyond, 
but  of  more  patient  tolerance  and  helpfulness 
and  kindness  here  in  this  life.  We  are  only  at 
the  beginning  of  things  here.  That  is  the  key 
to  all  the  moral  tangle  of  the  world.  Only  at  the 
beginning  of  things,  —  not  only  in  the  poor  sav- 
age life  that  seems  in  some  aspects  of  it,  to  have 
developed  here  not  very  much  above  the  brutes 

—  but  also  in  the  criminal  life  that  seems  some- 
times in  its  awful  depths  of  vice  and  animalism 
to  mock  at  our  theories  of  human  progress.  The 
hidden  good  seems  so  far  down,  so  hard  to  come 
at  —  that,  in  our  short  time  view,  we  fall  to 
wondering  if  it  is  there  at  all,  if  there  is  anything 
really  human  to  lay  hold  of,  and  to  afford  the 
moral  leverage  towards  any  nobler  being.  Talk 
as  if  all  was  settled  here  —  just  one  brief  pro- 
bation of  this  60  or  70  years  —  and  then  all 
saved,  or,  all  lost.     As  well  might  the  angels 


206  THE  VEILED  LIFE  IN  MAN 

have  looked  down  on  the  age  of  the  great  Sau- 
rians  and  watched 

"  The  monsters  of  the  prime 
That  tare  each  other  in  their  sHme." 

—  and  thought  that  was  the  end,  and  wondered 
what  it  meant.  Still  —  in  this  higher  range  of 
man's  being,  we  are  only  at  the  beginnings; 
though,  thank  God,  even  in  the  beginnings  we  see 
such  flashings  up  of  a  nobler  humanity,  and 
even  where  all  seems  worst  and  most  hopeless, 
such  unexpected  traits  of  some  thing  good  as 
prophecy  to  us  what  may  be  in  the  illimitable 
future.  It  is  a  veiled,  half  crippled,  half  devel- 
oped life  we  achieve  at  the  best,  a  life  with  a 
strange  mystery  both  about  its  evil  and  its  good 

—  "  all,  but  half  seen  and  darkly  "  —  but  yet  a 
life  haunted  with  the  sense  of  better  things  than 
ever  we  attain.  It  is  only  "  through  a  glass 
darkly  "  that  we  see  any  of  it  —  only  dimly  dis- 
cerning our  real  selves,  only  partially  knowing 
others,  only  getting  fleeting  glimpses  of  the 
things  which  yet  at  times,  we  know  are  the 
everlasting  realities  of  Being.  And  so,  again  I 
thank  God  for  these  great  words,  which,  here  and 
there,  in  the  inspired  hours  of  loftiest  souls,  rise 
above  these  poor  beginnings,  see  visions  of  an 
Infinite  wisdom  and  goodness  working  slowly 


THE  VEILED  LIFE  IN   MAN  20/ 

towards  diviner  things  and  tell  us  that  in  the 
end  the  darkness  shall  be  changed  to  light  and 
love  and  hope  be  justified.  All  the  struggle  of 
heart,  and  conscience  by  which  in  our  short 
earthly  span  we  ourselves  seem  to  make  so  little 
way;  all  the  patient  love  for  weak  and  way- 
ward ones  about  us,  which  here  seems  so  often 
vain;  all  the  long  toil  and  battle  for  making  the 
world  a  better,  cleaner  world,  which  here  seems 
to  bring  so  little  victory  —  there,  in  the  light, 
these  shall  be  made  plain.  There  we  shall  under- 
stand better  the  fulness  of  that  Divine  Love, 
which  here  we  fall  to  questioning  because  our 
own  love  seems  to  fall  so  short  of  any  effect. 
And  so  the  Faith,  the  hope,  the  trust  in  some 
wiser  power  than  ours,  to  which  we  cling  as 
we  grope  our  way  through  the  moral  mystery  of 
the  world,  shall  there  abide,  prove  to  be  the  real 
everlasting  reality.  That  is  Paul's  meaning.  It 
is  the  word  of  an  absolute  confidence  in  love  and 
hope  for  man,  which  shall  be  justified  hereafter, 
however  little  they  seem  to  come  to  here!  Here 
we  see  only  *'  through  a  glass  darkly  " ;  and  yet 
even  here,  we  catch  glimpses  of  the  truth  in 
Nature,  an  outward  trend  of  beneficial  mean- 
ing, in  the  changes  of  the  earth,  and  the  per- 
ishing and  developing  types  of  star  and  plant  and 
beast.     Is  it  less  sure  in  Man,  a  hidden  good 


208  THE  VEILED  LIFE  IN  MAN 

which  is  God's  very  meaning  in  His  creatures, 
and  which  in  all  struggling,  sinning,  repenting, 
praying  lives  of  Men,  is  groaning  and  travailing 
for  something  greater  than  we  can  see?  And 
so  abideth  "  Faith  "  in  this  hidden  good  in  man 
—  and  "  hope  "  for  it  to  conquer  in  the  end  — 
but  greatest  of  all  is  "  love  "  that  still,  through 
all,  keeps  loving,  and  pitying,  and  striving  and 
praying  for  the  good,  and  never  faileth  —  and 
knows  that  somehow  God  shall  justify  it  at 
last. 


THE  MYSTERY  OF  GOODNESS 

The  greatest  mystery  of  the  Universe  is  the 
mystery  of  Goodness. 

Not  the  mystery  of  Evil  or  Sin.  It  is  in  regard 
to  these  that  the  world  has  put  the  stress  of  its 
wonder,  in  the  modern  questioning  of  the  prob- 
lem of  Being.  God  has  been  taken  for  granted; 
but  how  in  the  world  did  sin  and  evil  come? 
So  the  true  order  has  been  reversed  through- 
out. We  hear  of  "  the  mystery  of  pain,"  but 
we  seldom  hear  such  a  phrase  as  '*  the  mystery  of 
happiness."  So  the  world  of  thinkers  has  been  oc- 
cupied w^ith  grave  discussions  about  the  origin 
of  evil,  and  the  mystery  of  sin.  But  hardly 
ever  is  such  a  subject  mooted  as,  '^  the  mystery 
of  Goodness." 

And  yet  it  was  directly  suggested  in  the  old 
Scriptures.  "  Great  is  the  mystery  of  godliness," 
wrote  Paul  and  it  was  only  the  perversity  of 
theological  textualism  which  switched  off  the 
attention  of  Christendom  from  the  magnificent 
thought  of  the  grandest  quality  in  Creation  man- 
ifested to  us  in  Christ  to  a  doctrinal  dispute  as 

209 


210  THE    MYSTERY   OF   GOODNESS 

to  whether  the  exact  method  of  that  highest 
manifestation  involved  an  assertion  that  Christ 
v^as  God. 

To  that  grandest  quality  we  go  back,  as  the 
deepest  mystery  in  the  economy  of  the  Universe. 
Godliness  is  a  great  word  in  the  New  Testament 
and  always  in  the  same  meaning  of  the  higher 
kind  of  human  goodness,  —  goodness  not  of  any 
mere  conventional  legal  morality  kind,  but  good- 
ness rooted  in  God,  and  looking  up  to  God. 

And  now  does  any  one  ask,  Where  is  the 
special  helpfulness  of  emphasizing  that  the  great 
mystery  of  Being  is  in  this  Godliness,  this  higher 
kind  of  goodness  ?  Perhaps  I  can  indicate  it  best 
by  telling  how  the  help  of  it  actually  came  to  me. 
It  was  in  talking  with  a  friend  who  had  come  to 
me  sorely  oppressed  and  troubled  with  the  sense  of 
all  the  wickedness  which  there  is,  the  dreadful 
crimes  that  darken  the  story  of  the  world  from 
day  to  day,  the  deep  viciousness  which  we  con- 
stantly see,  and  which  sometimes  seems  almost 
irredeemable,  —  yes,  and  the  sense  of  how  there 
is  so  much  of  it  in  ourselves,  so  that  often  those 
who  perhaps  seem  outwardly  good  feel  in  their 
own  souls  dreadful  possibilities  of  sin  which  at 
times  crush  them  almost  into  despair.  "  Oh !  " 
my  friend  said,  and  he  spoke  wth  an  agony  of 
spirit  that  I  can  never  forget :     ''  How  does  it 


THE   MYSTERY   OF   GOODNESS  211 

come?  What  does  it  all  mean?  Why  is  it  that 
there  is  all  this  sin  in  the  world  and  in  our- 
selves? Why  is  it  that  we  do  such  mean,  bad 
things  ?  Why  is  it  that,  even  after  we  have  been 
praying,  and  feeling  as  if  we  could  never  do 
wrong  any  more,  we  so  often  go  and  forget  the 
good,  and  do  the  very  opposite?"  "Till,"  he 
said,  "  sometimes  it  sets  me  wondering  whether 
it  is  any  use,  —  and  this  praying  and  trying  and 
struggling,  —  whether  one  might  not  as  well 
let  all  go.'' 

And  then  it  was  that  there  flashed  into  my 
mind  this  thought  I  am  putting  to  you  here ;  and 
I  said :  "  O,  my  friend,  I  feel  all  this  just  as 
you  do;  and  I  do  not  know  that  I  can  help  you 
much.  Only,  are  not  wx  looking  at  it  all,  for  one 
thing,  in  the  wrong  way,  from  the  wrong  end, 
as  it  were?  We  are  talking  as  if  all  this  evil 
in  us  and  in  the  world  were  wonderful,  such  a 
mystery!  Is  it  not  really  the  good  that  is  the 
mystery?  This  haunting  good,  that  rebukes  the 
bad  in  us,  how-ever  natural  and  tempting  the  bad 
may  seem,  —  how  does  this  come  ?  —  this  good 
that  will  not  let  us  rest  in  sin,  however  much 
we  want  to  do;  that  makes  us  ashamed  of  it, 
and  long  to  be  free  from  it,  and  that  no  sin  or 
evil  seems  utterly  to  crush  out  of  us,  or  out  of  the 
world,  and  that  age  after  age  has  kept  lifting 


212  THE   MYSTERY   OF   GOODNESS 

mankind  a  little  higher,  and  that  still  keeps  up  the 
struggle,  though  it  often  does  seem  to  accomplish 
so  little? 

The  more  I  have  thought  of  all  this  since,  the 
more  I  have  felt  that  this  is  the  true  way  of 
looking  at  the  matter,  and  that  it  makes  it,  at  any 
rate,  not  quite  so  dark  and  hopeless.  Of  course, 
I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  this  is  the  whole  ac- 
count of  the  mystery  of  our  moral  being,  that  it 
is  all  solved  by  putting  the  stress  of  our  won- 
der, not  upon  how  evil  came  to  be,  but  upon  how 
good  comes  and  goodness  and  all  the  sense 
of  goodness  and  the  striving  for  it.  Of  course, 
it  is  just  as  great  a  mystery,  if  we  talk  of  begin- 
nings, how  came  anything  to  be  ?  How  came  mat- 
ter? Still  more,  how  came  life?  But  human 
knowledge  has  pretty  well  accepted  the  fact  that 
these  are  not  to  be  known,  simply  to  be  accepted. 
Science  begins  with  what  is,  —  a  world,  and  life 
in  it,  and,  evidently,  as  far  back  as  we  can  trace, 
the  struggle  for  existence,  everything  striving  to 
be  and  to  continue  to  be,  a  teeming,  seething 
world  of  life,  with  everything  writhing  and 
scratching  and  clawing  in  the  struggle  for  its 
place  and  its  food,  and  for  the  continuance  of 
its  being.  And  all  this  ha^  come  to  seem,  in 
a  fashion,  natural.  Granted  a  world  of  life  and 
living  things,  and  selfishness  and  struggle  for 


THE   MYSTERY   OF   GOODNESS  213 

self  seem  as  if  they  might  originate  themselves. 
The  tiniest  animalcule  can  be  conceived  of,  and 
can  hardly  be  conceived  of  as  other  than  climb- 
ing upward,  over  everything  in  its  way,  and 
struggling,  with  a  dumb,  unconscious  force,  to 
make  good  its  own  footing  in  the  world  in  which 
it  finds  itself.  And,  out  of  such  struggling,  war- 
ring life,  one  can  also  understand,  in  a  fashion, 
the  stronger  surviving,  and  such  stronger  life 
adapting  itself  to  the  world's  conditions  by  slow, 
wonderful  changes,  and  the  struggle  growing 
continually  more  complicated  and  far-reaching. 
Granted  all  that,  and  there  is  no  particular  mys- 
tery in  all  that  we  call  evil.  Indifference  to 
others,  greed,  lust,  —  they  would  not  be  evil  in 
such  a  beginning  of  the  world,  but  just  its  nat- 
ural forms  and  forces  working  themselves  out. 
And,  if  you  can  imagine  such  clash  of  forces 
killing  out  all  but  the  strongest  or  cunningest, 
and  gradually  working  up  through  brute-life  to 
man,  —  still,  what  savagism,  to  begin  with ! 
And,  if  the  whole  thing  be  only  what  man  (be- 
ginning in  that  savagism,  or  beginning  further 
back  still  among  the  brutes)  has  made  of  him- 
self, nothing  specially  wonderful  or  mysterious 
in  much  of  that  savagism  lingering  on,  or  in 
constant  reversions  to  it!  As  you  see  what  that 
original  struggle  for  self  is  still  in  its  lower  ani- 


214  THE    MYSTERY   OF   GOODNESS 

mal  forms,  I  do  not  think  we  need  much  ex- 
plaining how  all  that  we  call  ''  evil  "  comes  still 
to  be,  —  all  forms  of  lust  and  cruelty  and  self- 
indulgence,  even  such  blood-thirst  as  gloated  over 
the  horrors  of  Dahomey,  or  has  made  possible 
such  butcheries  as  we  have  read  of  in  Armenia; 
ay,  and  so  we  know  whence  come  the  possibil- 
ities of  vice  and  wickedness  in  ourselves. 

Only,  why  does  it  seem  ''  evil  "  ?  Why  do  we 
shudder  at  it,  and  shrink  from  it,  and  feel  like 
loathing  ourselves  even  for  thinking  of  such 
things  ?  Why  do  not  we  just  live  on,  in  whatever 
life  seems  natural  to  us?  Whence  comes  this 
sense  of  good,  this  admiration  for  the  good, 
which  shames  the  evil  in  us,  even  while  it  still 
is  in  us  ?  What  is  it  makes  us  long  for  something 
better,  and  keep  on  hoping  that  some  day  we  may 
attain  the  better?  And,  when  we  look  out  from 
ourselves,  to  what  Goodness  is  to  the  heart  of 
mankind,  —  all  the  way  from  the  first  dim  sense 
of  law  and  right  to  the  very  highest  moral  hero- 
ism and  devoted  self-sacrifice,  —  whence  comes 
all  that? 

Yes !  That  is  the  mystery,  the  everlasting  mys- 
tery of  the  world :  how  comes  Goodness  ? 

There  are  some  thinkers  who  fancy  that,  in 
some  way,  it  could  be  and  must  have  been  de- 
veloped out  of  the  struggle  for  self.     I  do  not 


THE    MYSTERY   OF   GOODNESS  215 

think  we  are  ever  really  going  to  trace  it  that 
way.  We  might  get  a  certain  prudential,  mutual 
care  that  way,  but  not  unselfish  love.  I  do  not 
think  any  philosophizing  is  ever  going  to  get 
real  love  for  others  out  of  any  combination  or 
manipulation  of  love  for  self.  A  truer  thought 
seems  that  idea  held  by  some,  and  notably 
worked  out  in  Prof.  Henry  Drummond's  "  As- 
cent of  Man,''  that,  even  from  the  very  begin- 
nings of  life,  we  find  not  only  the  unmistake- 
able  struggle  for  self,  but  also  germs  of  altru- 
ism, care  for  other  life,  and  that  out  of  these 
have  grown  the  various  developments  of  good- 
ness. That  looks  more  likely.  But  that  does 
not  explain  the  mystery,  only  puts  it  back  a  little 
further.  Whence  come  these  germs  of  care  for 
other  life,  with  such  potentialities  of  all  unself- 
ish virtue,  up  to  the  loftiest  goodness  ?  Ah !  here 
is  where  the  mystery  tends  to  higher  things,  and 
points  man  upward  to  meanings,  and  a  Power 
at  work  which  means  them,  which,  however  it 
may  seem  lost  in  almost  endless  trains  of  causa- 
tion, leads  us,  at  last,  not  to  mere  lifeless  "  en- 
ergy," but  to  some  beneficent  Power  v/hich  has 
caused  things  to  be  thus,  and  is  ever  silently  lead- 
ing them  on. 

I  think  there  are  few  things  more  interesting 
in  the  world  than  to  watch  the  dawning  of  this 


21 6  THE   MYSTERY   OF   GOODNESS 

mysterious  goodness  here  and  there,  and  to  trace 
its  growth  to  higher  and  nobler  developments. 
It  may  be  far  short  of  man  in  its  beginnings. 
How  one  would  like,  for  instance,  in  this  mat- 
ter of  the  law  of  kindness,  to  trace  the  beginning 
of  all  kindness  and  care  for  the  weak  and  ailing 
and  poor.     All  through  the  animal  world  the 
social  instinct  seems  to  be  to  destroy  the  weak 
or  maimed  of  the  herd  or  the  flock,  that  is  the 
instinct  of  such  social  organisation  as  they  have. 
Yet  even  then,  as  an  individual  feeling,  we  find 
the  dawnings  of  sympathy  and  help;  and  stories 
of  animals  helping  each  other  in  some  injury 
or  need  are  among  the  noblest  pages  in  natural 
history.     I  shall  never  forget  what  an  old  friend 
once  told  me  of  how  he  used  to  watch  two  toads 
in  his  greenhouse.    One  of  them  had  had  its  foot 
injured,  and  could  barely  crawl  about;  and  he 
said  it  was  such  a  touching  thing  to  see  the  other 
waiting  upon  it,  and  helping  it  so  tenderly  over 
the   rough  rockery,   just  as  a  man  might  help 
his  lame  comrade  up  some  mountain  path.    Now, 
how  did  that  individual  helpfulness  for  a  poor, 
maimed  creature  take  the  further  step  of  using 
the  social  organism  to  keep  such  weakness  alive 
instead  of   destroying  it  ?     Ah !   who   can   tell  ? 
That  is  part  of  the  mystery  of  goodness.     Prob- 
ably, by  the  time  that  further  stage  was  reached. 


THE   MYSTERY   OF   GOODNESS  217 

Man  was  well  on  the  way.  And  every  step  of 
man,  each  moral  advance,  first  in  individual  feel- 
ing, then  in  idea  and  law,  and  gradually  grow- 
ing into  something  of  accordant  action,  is  touched 
with  the  same  element  of  mystery  and  wonder. 
Trace  up  the  gradual  law  of  mutual  right  and 
justice,  from  the  wild,  measureless  instinct  of 
revenge,  first,  to  the  restraint  of  equal  vengeance, 
"  an  eye  for  an  eye,"  ''  for  a  tooth  "  only  ''  a 
tooth,"  then  on  to  compensation  for  the  injury 
instead  of  mere  retaliating  injury,  and  onward 
still  to  the  far  higher  thought  of  generosity 
to  an  enemy.  We  cannot  trace  it.  Only,  here 
and  there,  along  the  line  of  growth,  we  see  the 
new  thought  manifested  in  some  action  which 
at  the  moment,  perhaps,  seemed  mere  folly  to 
those  about,  but  which  has  lived  in  human  mem- 
ory ever  since.  So,  for  instance,  when  David  had 
the  sleeping  King  Saul  in  his  power,  that  half- 
mad  foe,  who  was  hunting  him  for  his  life,  and 
his  companion,  Abishai,  would  have  pinned  the 
king  to  the  ground  with  one  spear-stroke,  "  Let 
me  smite  him,"  he  said,  ''  and  I  will  not  need 
to  smite  him  a  second  time !  "  Ah !  in  that  re- 
fusal to  harm  him  there  is  the  flashing  out  of  a 
new  standard  of  kindness,  even  to  enemies ! 

"  So,    age   by    age,    since   time   began, 
We  see  the  steady  gain  of  man." 


2l8  THE   MYSTERY  OF   GOODNESS 

And  each  gain,  when  it  first  struck  upon  the 
heart  of  those  used  to  lower  ways,  must  have 
been  a  mystery,  and  the  whole  onward  growth 
a  larger,  further-reaching  mystery,  until  it  came 
to  its  crowning  height  in  that  strong  Son  of 
Man  who  seemed  to  his  followers  so  good,  so 
**  godly  "  in  a  fashion  passing  the  sons  of  men, 
that  Paul,  in  his  letter,  called  him  the  very  "  mys- 
tery of  godliness,"  that  had  been  manifested  not 
in  word  or  law,  but  in  the  very  flesh  of  one  made 
like  to  his  brethren,  and  yet  so  far  above  them. 

All  this  comes  to  us  in  that  deep  word,  of 
Paul's  awe  at  what  seemed  to  him  Christ's  per- 
fect and  mysterious  goodness.  And  it  seems 
to  me  to  put  the  mystery  there  forever,  not  in 
the  evil  in  man  and  in  the  world,  but  in  good- 
ness, from  its  lowest  manifestation  up  to  its  very 
highest. 

But  now,  finally,  what  does  all  this  amount 
to  ?  Does  it  make  goodness  easier,  thus  to  recog- 
nise it  as  the  deep,  divine  mystery  of  the  world? 

I  do  not  know  that  it  does,  in  any  single  act 
of  life.  But  I  think  it  does  help  the  good  in 
our  nature  and  the  good  in  the  world.  It  helps 
us  not  to  be  quite  so  despairing  when  the  evil 
seems  as  if  it  was  pervading  all  and  carrying 
all  before  it.  It  helps  us  to  be  patient  even  with 
evil,  to  understand  that  goodness  grows  slowly  in 


THE   MYSTERY   OF   GOODNESS  2ig 

the  divine  evolution  of  the  world,  but  that  it  does 
grow,  always  has  been  growing,  and  is  not  going 
to  cease  and  come  to  a  stand  still  now. 

No :  it  may  not  make  any  visible  change  when 
some  dire  temptation  comes  upon  the  heart,  or 
some  wild  passion  rises  like  a  whirlwind  within 
us.  It  is  not  any  moralising  or  philosophising 
that  helps  us  then,  but  just  whatever  near  mo- 
tive of  love  or  honor  there  may  be  to  cling  to. 
But  life  is  not  all  crises  of  hot  temptation;  and 
meanwhile,  in  quieter  and  evener  times,  it  is  a 
help  to  life's  better  growth  to  recognise  this  deep, 
mysterious  force  of  good  which  holds  us  and  will 
not  let  us  utterly  go,  and  which,  the  more  we 
think  of  it,  the  more  we  know  that  it  will  never 
let  us  have  peace  in  any  wTong.  Yes:  the  sense 
of  this,  the  thought  of  this,  is  something  to  help 
the  good  in  us,  to  help  us  in  the  daily  living 
for  life's  nobler  things;  and  it  is  something  to 
help  us,  even  in  all  our  conscious  weakness,  never 
to  give  up  the  strife  or  to  despair  of  trying  again ; 
to  make  us  sure  that  God  has  not  forsaken  us 
or  given  us  up,  so  that  we  may  not  give  our- 
selves up.  Yes;  and,  apart  from  our  own  per- 
sonal struggle,  it  should  help  us  to  keep  up  the 
struggle  in  the  world  for  justice  and  right  among 
nations,  and  for  the  uplifting  of  the  fallen  and 
despairing,  and  for  all  social  well-being.     And 


220  THE    MYSTERY   OF   GOODNESS 

SO  the  nobler  life  is  kept  still  strengthening  among 
men,  and  kindness  grows  from  a  personal  to  a 
social  ideal;  and  the  world  keeps  moving  round 
a  little  out  of  the  ancient  darkness.  It  is  not  yet 
into  any  perfect  light  it  comes;  but,  at  least,  it 
comes  where  we  can  see  dawning  the  lights  of 
God's  higher  meanings  for  man,  and  so  we  can 
keep  on  watching  and  waiting  and  striving  and 
praying,  and  know  that  his  world  is  moving  and 
that  the  Day  will  come. 


THE  MYSTERY  OF  PAIN 

If  God  is  good  and  if  he  is  all  powerful,  why- 
is  it  that  the  world  has  these  dire  shapes  of  pain 
and  sorrow  and  death  among  its  constant  pres- 
ences? If  the  Infinite  is  Love,  why  is  it  that 
no  moment  of  no  hour,  the  centuries  through, 
but  bears  out  into  the  Infinite  some  groan  or 
shriek  or  curse  of  life  writhing  in  the  grasp  of 
some  overmastering  calamity?  Even  in  the 
animal  world  it  seems  bad  enough,  and  students 
of  nature  like  Huxley  and  John  Fiske  have  de- 
clared Nature  to  be  full  of  cruelty  and  a  scene 
of  incessant  and  universal  strife.  In  human  life 
the  agony  seems  even  more  acute.  Of  all  the 
multitudes  of  the  living,  not  one  but  has  some 
pang  to  bear.  Some  hearts  are  worn  almost  to 
despair  by  all  life's  burden  and  pain.  To  all, 
in  a  few  brief  years,  the  sun  will  darken  and  the 
light  of  life  go  out,  with  pangs  the  sum  of  which, 
as  one  thinks  of  the  myriads  of  earth's  people, 
is  awful  to  compute.  Why  is  it?  If  God  is 
good  and  is  all  power,  why  is  all  this?  This 
is  "  the  mystery  of  pain." 

221 


222  THE   MYSTERY   OF   PAIN 

Do  you  suppose  that  I  think  I  can  explain  it 
all  ?  No,  but  I  do  think  that  there  are  some  lights 
upon  it  here  and  there  which  show  it  as  not 
quite  such  a  hopeless  mystery  as  is  often  alleged 
—  lights  which  point  towards  predominant  benef- 
icence as  to  a  mystery  not  to  blind,  lifeless  forces, 
but  of  a  slowly  working  goodness,  a  mystery 
not  disintegrating  things  into  chaos,  but  round- 
ing them  toward  ever  higher  order ;  —  a  mystery 
therefore,  not  of  atheism  and  despair,  but  of 
faith  and  hope  and  quiet  immovable  trust. 

The  first  light  which  strikes  me  on  this  sub- 
ject of  pain  is  as  to  the  real  proportions  of  the 
mystery.  We  are  apt  to  exaggerate  it.  We  ex- 
aggerate it  by  the  very  fact  of  massing  it  together 
in  our  thought,  in  order  to  get  a  completer  view 
of  it.  But  it  is  not  a  completer  view.  That 
is  not  how  Nature  distributes  pain.  It  is  really 
mixed  up  with  a  great  deal  of  happiness.  Take, 
for  instance,  this  thought  of  evolution.  I  am 
told  of  a  thousand  or  a  million  perishing  for 
one  "  fittest  "  to  survive.  But  then,  that  does 
not  take  place  all  at  once,  as  one  dire  tragedy 
of  slaughtered.  That  struggle  for  existence  is 
simply  the  name  we  give  to  the  whole  life  of 
animated  nature,  viewed  in  the  light  of  its  large 
result  of  gradual  change  and  progress.  Every 
element  of  it  is  going  on  all  the  time  —  in  the 


THE   MYSTERY   OF   PAIN  223 

trees  above  your  head,  where  the  birds  seem  hav- 
ing a  pretty  good  time  upon  the  whole,  and  in  the 
grass  where  the  insects  Uve  their  httle  life,  and 
in  the  waters  in  which  the  tiny  fish  are  play- 
ing in  their  shoals.  Some  are  dying  all  the  time, 
and  the  types  are  changing  as  the  centuries  roll. 
And  yet  it  does  not  strike  us  as  such  a  dreadful 
spectacle.  Have  you  ever  thought  how  seldom 
in  your  country  walks,  for  instance,  you  see 
a  dead  animal,  —  so  seldom  that  you  always  stop 
to  look  at  it.  For  all  those  birds  of  which  you 
see  a  thousand  busy  and  happy  in  every  mile  or 
two,  how  often  is  it  that  you  find  one  lying  dead? 
The  preying  of  animals  —  preying  on  one  an- 
other —  sounds  very  cruel ;  but  it  is  very  doubt- 
ful how  much  pain  there  is  about  it.  My  friend 
Crowther  Hirst  has  for  some  years  been  making 
inquiries  as  to  the  actual  pain  felt,  even  by  the 
most  sensitive  of  animals,  man,  when  he  is  preyed 
upon  by  the  greater  wild  beasts;  and  the  result 
is  a  curious  consensus  of  testimony  that  the  shock 
of  a  lion's  or  tiger's  onslaught  seems  to  numb 
the  system,  almost  taking  away  all  pain,  even 
when  leaving  consciousness.  Of  course  I  do  not 
mean  that  there  is  no  pain  in  the  natural  world, 
but  that  many  things  point  to  its  being  so  spaced 
out  in  general  happy  life  as  not  to  be  any  un- 
bearable mystery.     And  is  it  not  really  a  good 


224  THE    MYSTERY    OF    PAIN 

deal  so  with  the  pain  of  mankind  when  you  look 
at  it  in  its  real  perspective  in  the  whole  of  life? 
It,  too,  is  mixed  up  with  a  good  deal  of  hap- 
piness. On  the  whole,  man  would  rather  live 
than  not. 

Indeed,  pain  is  so  mixed  up  with  enjoyment 
in  its  actual  happening,  that,  as  a  fact,  the  world 
at  large  has  never  been  either  crushed  or  hope- 
lessly perplexed  by  it.  Because,  we  must  re- 
member, it  is  not  we  who  have  first  experienced 
this  mystery  of  pain.  From  the  beginning  the 
very  same  facts  w^hich  perplex  us  have  pressed 
upon  the  life  of  man ;  and  yet  on  the  whole  man- 
kind have  felt  that  it  is  not  a  bad  world  to  live 
in.  Individuals  may  have  been  pessimists,  but 
not  the  human  race  in  its  average  feeling.  In- 
dividuals may  have  welcomed  suicide  as  an  es- 
cape from  so  bad  a  world,  but  never  races.  And 
yet  in  older  times  all  the  elements  of  pain  were 
larger,  stronger,  in  more  awful  masses,  than  they 
are  to-day.  We  are  horrified  to  hear  of  some 
dreadful  famine.  Why,  in  the  older  world  there 
were  a  dozen  famines  for  every  one  to-day,  and 
far  more  terrible.  We  are  shocked  by  the  decima- 
tions of  some  pestilence,  against  which  all  pre- 
cautions or  remedies  seem  powerless.  The  pesti- 
lences of  the  ancient  world  were  infinitely  worse. 
In  the   Black   Death  of  the   fourteenth  century 


THE   MYSTERY   OF   PAIN  225 

a  quarter  of  the  whole  population  of  Europe  and 
Asia  died.  In  England  and  Italy,  half  the  people 
perished.  There  were  towns  and  villages  in 
which  hardly  a  soul  survived.  In  those  old  cen- 
turies the  plague  came  almost  every  generation. 
And  yet,  even  with  such  things  to  average  in, 
mankind  in  the  mass  has  never  doubted  either 
that  life  is  worth  living  or  that  God  is  good. 
Take  the  great  world-religions.  Even  those 
which  have  felt  the  power  of  evil  so  immense  as 
to  regard  it  as  a  rival  god  have  believed  in  the 
good  God,  as  the  strongest.  Zoroastrianism — 
Parseeism  now  —  is  the  world's  most  perfect 
dualism,  with  Ormuzd,  the  good  Deity,  and 
Ahriman,  the  power  of  evil.  But  in  the  lapse 
of  countless  eaons  it  was  Ormuzd,  the  power 
of  light  and  right,  who  was  to  triumph.  The 
mystery  of  pain  was  in  blacker  masses  and  men 
could  not  see  even  as  far  into  it  as  we  can.  And 
yet  what  they  saw  was  enough  to  keep  alive 
an  indomitable  feeling  that  the  balance  of  result 
is  to  the  good. 

The  second  light  upon  the  mystery  —  not  ex- 
planation of  it  (that,  as  I  have  said,  we  must 
not  expect)  but  a  sort  of  light  which  shows  it 
not  quite  so  dark  —  is  this ;  that  it  is  not  those 
who  are  most  in  the  shadow  of  pain  who  most 
feel  it  a  mystery.    You  see,  when  I  point  to  that 


226  THE   MYSTERY   OF   PAIN 

great  fact  which  I  have  been  dweHing  on,  that 
the  mass  of  mankind  do  not  feel  the  world  so 
hopelessly  evil,  I  am  apt  to  be  told,  No,  perhaps 
not,  because  the  pain  does  not  fall  upon  the 
whole  of  mankind  at  once,  and  it  is  easy  for 
people  to  be  philosophical  about  the  pain  of 
others.  But  do  you  note  that  that  really  is  an 
admission  that,  leaving  aside  the  sufferings  of 
others,  the  generality  of  lives  have  not  more 
suffering  of  their  own  than  they  can  face  without 
dismay  ?  And  there  is  something  still  more  strik- 
ing about  this,  namely  that  it  is  not  even  those 
who  have  most  to  bear  who  most  feel  pain  such 
an  oppressive  mystery.  This  is  not  a  matter  of 
large  general  averages,  for  which  statistics  can 
be  referred  to;  but  I  think,  if  you  go  over  in 
your  mind  those  who  have  had  the  heaviest  bur- 
dens to  bear,  the  most  pain,  those  upon  whom  the 
mystery  of  pain  has  most  seemed,  to  others,  to 
rest  —  they  have  not  really  been  the  most  op- 
pressed by  it,  their  faith  in  God's  goodness  most 
shaken.  As  far  as  my  experience  goes,  it  has 
been  the  very  opposite.  Those  difficulties  of 
faith,  arising  from  there  being  so  much  pain  in 
the  world,  are  almost  all  difficulties  of  those  who 
look  at  it  in  theory,  not  of  those  who  practically 
have  to  bear  it.  In  the  course  of  a  pretty  long 
ministry  I  have  seen  many,  very  many,  suffer- 


THE    MYSTERY   OF   PAIN  227 

ing  ones,  but  for  the  most  part  it  has  been  those 
suffering  ones  who  have  had  the  happiest  faith.  It 
has  been  those  who  have  known  most  of  pain 
who  have  least  felt  it  any  oppressive  mystery. 
Why,  how  often  do  you  see  in  some  crippled 
or  sorely  tried  life,  almost  a  special  compensa- 
tion in  the  beautiful  sweetness  of  character  and 
soul !  Their  friends  may  feel  such  pain  a  '*  mys- 
tery," hardly  ever  they  themselves.  Col.  Inger- 
soll  said  once  that  the  fact  of  one  martyr  was 
enough  to  discredit  the  idea  of  a  good  God. 
But,  if  there  were  any  real  force  in  that  dif- 
ficulty, how  curious  that  the  martyrs  themselves 
have  never  felt  it,  for  assuredly  they  have  not. 
There  have  been  no  grander  testimonies  of  tri- 
umphant faith  in  God's  goodness  than  have  con- 
tinually risen  from  those  on  whom  that  mystery 
of  pain  has  come  in  the  shape  of  fierce  agonies 
of  rack  or  fire.  So  that  practically,  this  mystery 
of  pain  does  not  seem  to  be  so  hopeless  and  op-^ 
pressive  as  theoretically,  one  is  apt  to  think  it 
should  be. 

But  now  let  us  look  at  it  theoretically.  Look 
at  this  element  of  pain  as  it  appears  in  the  whole 
make-up  of  the  world.  Take  Nature  for  a  mo- 
ment (apart  from  the  idea  of  God.)  Regard 
Nature  as  a  mere  congeries  of  forces,  or  if  you 
think  that  science  tends  toward  the  idea  that  all 


228  THE    MYSTERY   OF   PAIN 

forces  are  but  variations  of  the  same  force,  then 
regard  Nature  as  the  varied  manifestation  of 
one  mighty  and  mysterious  energy.  We  will  not 
say  God,  at  present,  but  ''  energy  " ;  and  all  that 
is,  and  all  the  gradual  changing  and  becoming 
of  things,  the  outcome  of  that  energy.  Well,  is 
the  outcome  good?  not,  is  it  perceptibly  good 
in  each  separate  part,  —  that  it  is  hardly  to 
be  expected  we  should  be  able  to  see — but, 
is  the  general  outcome  of  all  these  forces 
or  of  this  energy  good?  Is  the  changing 
and  becoming  of  things  good?  Is  the  final  re- 
sultant of  all  the  various  intricate  working  good? 
Does  the  sweep  of  the  whole  trend  toward  good? 
Why,  who  can  doubt  it?  What  has  the  long 
past  been  doing?  Think  how  this  globe,  to  read 
its  history  by  the  later  light  of  science,  has 
evolved  from  the  primeval  fire-mists  into  this 
wondrous  earth,  with  all  the  wonder  and  beauty 
of  its  myriad-fold  life!  Think  of  that  marvel- 
lous '  development '  and  all  that  has  come  of  it, 
—  for  it  is  all  the  work  of  this  mighty  net- 
work of  co-operating  forces,  all,  up  to  man,  look- 
ing at  it,  admiring  it,  investigating  it  —  yes,  up 
to  man,  with  his  sense  of  goodness  and  right. 
Do  not  leave  out  any  of  the  destruction  and 
death  and  conflict  that  there  has  been.  Recog- 
nise all  the  pain  that  has  been  involved  in  this 


THE    MYSTERY   OF    PAIN  229 

slow  process,  which  through  milHons  of  years 
has  been  bringing  all  this  to  pass.  But  has  not 
the  sweep  of  the  whole  been  trending  unmis- 
takeably  to  good?  Is  it  not  a  grand  order,  that 
which  through  whatever  clash  and  conflict  there 
may  have  been,  has  kept  all  working  together  in 
the  subtle  endless  chain  of  cause  and  effect,  with 
such  result  as  we  see  in  the  heavens  and  the  earth 
and  in  the  life  of  man?  And  then  remember 
that  the  pain  is  simply  a  part  of  that  order,  and 
we  have  got  to  accept  it  as  it  is,  this  mighty 
order  with  its  earthquakes  and  volcanoes  as  well 
as  its  roses  and  its  butterflies,  with  its  death  ever 
changing  into  life  and  life  ever  changing  into 
death.  Shall  we  say  that  one  part  is  bad  and  the 
other  good  ?  All  belong  together  in  the  grand  or- 
der. Shall  we  complain  because  the  order  is  often 
hard  on  man?  Yet  we  can  see  how  it  is  this 
very  order  and  the  absolute  certainty  of  it,  which 
has  enabled  man  to  take  a  gradually  wiser, 
stronger,  safer  part  in  the  midst  of  the  great 
complicated  whole.  Man  might  have  been  a  mere 
atom  in  the  whole,  fitting  in  like  a  star  or  a  tree ; 
but  he  has  a  nobler  part  —  a  part  of  growth  and 
a  part  of  thought —  and  has  had  to  feel  his 
way  step  by  step  into  his  part  in  this  intricate 
network  of  substances  and  forces.  And  the  very 
things  which  have  seemed  hard  upon  him  have 


230  THE   MYSTERY   OF   PAIN 

helped  him.  Suffering  has  been  his  greatest 
teacher.  Pain  is  simply  the  educating  touch  of 
those  great  forces  around  him,  when  he  has 
taken  hold  of  them  wrongly,  been  ignorant  of 
them,  or  tried  to  disregard  them.  Science  has 
been  his  settled  knowledge  of  them;  and  science 
has  only  been  possible  because  they  are  so  settled. 
Once  a  force  known,  a  law  known,  known  for 
ever!  And  the  more  man  keeps  it,  the  more  he 
finds  it  beneficent. 

Well  now  change  the  terms.  Instead  of  saying 
Nature  or  energy,  let  us  say  God.  This  mys- 
terious something  that  causes  all  things  to  be  — 
from  the  primeval  fire-mist  all  the  way  up  to 
man  —  and  all  to  be  bound,  and  to  work,  so 
wondrously  together —  instead  of  calling  this 
"Order"  or  "Tendency"  or  "  Hfeless  Force" 
let  us  think  of  it  as  mind  and  will,  working  in 
and  through  all  things.  But  is  anything  altered  ? 
Is  anything  w^orsened  ?  Is  the  great  order  which 
we  call  "  Nature  "  and  which  we  see  to  be  bene- 
ficent if  man  uses  it  rightly,  —  is  it  less  bene- 
ficent if  we  regard  it  as  the  product  of  an  intel- 
ligence which  meant  it?  Surely  we  shall  not 
regard  that  as  evil  in  God  which  we  have  just 
been  admiring  as  good  in  Nature !  And  yet  that 
is  just  what  people  often  do!  It  is  only  a  little 
while  ago  that  I  was  reading  one  of  these  modern 


THE    MYSTERY   OF    PAIN  23I 

diatribes  against  religion,  founded  upon  this  fact 
of  the  mystery  of  pain.  The  writer  spoke  of 
all  the  pain  and  misery  of  the  world  as  so  dread- 
ful that,  if  there  were  a  God  who  permitted  it, 
he  must  be  a  sort  of  fiend ;  and  then  with  a  final 
burst  of  indignation  he  said,  *'  From  such  relig- 
ion I  turn  away ;  I  turn  to  Nature  and  Science  " 
—  in  the  very  next  paragraph  he  began  extoll- 
ing the  calm,  unchangeable  order  of  Nature.  But 
surely  there  is  no  real  sense  in  that!  It  is  play- 
ing fast  and  loose  with  the  meaning  of  facts 
to  denounce  them  as  the  will  of  God  and  then 
to  praise  them  as  the  outcom.e  of  Nature.  No! 
This  is  one  of  the  great  gains  which  have  come 
of  Science:  it  has  taught  us  to  feel  that  man's 
real  hope  is  in  the  mighty  unchangeable  order  of 
the  laws  that  cause  the  whole,  not  in  some  im- 
possible suspension  or  relaxation  of  those  laws. 
So  all  this  pain  of  the  world  is  man's  teacher 
to  a  better  future ;  and,  while  thus  teaching  man, 
it  has  not,  as  I  showed  at  first,  ever  been  prac- 
tically enough  really  to  discourage  or  dismay 
mankind. 

You  notice  that  I  do  not  put  this  use,  as 
man's  teacher,  as  the  explanation  of  the  mystery 
of  pain ;  but  I  think  it  is  a  light  upon  it,  making 
it  look  not  so  dark.  But  there  is  a  greater  light 
still,    I    think,    in    seeing   how   this   liability   to 


232  THE   MYSTERY   OF   PAIN 

danger  and  pain  provides  the  world  with  its  in- 
tensest  moral  impulses.  It  is  out  of  dangers  and 
calamities  that  the  noblest  heroism  of  the  world 
is  born.  Accidents,  perils,  destructions,  which  at 
first  almost  strike  you  dumb  by  the  awfulness 
of  the  pain  they  involve,  are  constantly  found  to 
arouse  a  courage,  a  heroism,  which  lift  them  clear 
out  of  the  rank  of  mere  physical  events  and 
give  them  a  value  to  the  world's  higher  life,  ut- 
terly outweighing  all  mere  bodily  suffering.  You 
know  how  there  is  never  a  railroad  accident,  a 
ship-wreck,  a  great  fire,  never  any  one  of  those 
dire  catastrophes  in  which  the  mystery  of  pain 
seems  to  come  to  its  very  climax,  but  out  of  the 
dark  mystery  gleams  some  light  of  beautiful  he- 
roic unselfishness.  Take  an  illustration.  I  recall 
the  most  awful  colliery  explosion  that  ever  took 
place  in  England,  that  at  the  '*  Oaks  "  Colliery 
in  1866,  in  which  above  three  hundred  men  and 
boys  perished.  But  that  was  not  all.  While  it 
was  still  doubtful  if  some  might  not  be  saved, 
there  was  a  call  for  volunteers  to  go  down;  and 
without  a  moment's  hesitation  thirty-three  men  in 
all  went  down,  and  at  their  head  the  gallant 
young  engineer.  Parkin  Jeffcock.  And  then  a 
little  while  of  waiting,  and  suddenly  another  ex- 
plosion, the  very  gearing  of  the  pit  blown  into 
shapeless  ruins;  and  not  only  was  all  hope  for 


THE    MYSTERY    OF    PAIN  233 

the  main  body  of  miners  at  an  end,  but  every  one 
of  those  explorers  had  perished  too. 

I  knew  that  part  of  the  country  in  those  days, 
and  I  remember  as  if  it  were  but  yesterday  how 
the  horror  of  all  that  thrilled  through  the  coun- 
try; and  one  of  the  very  thoughts  it  set  many 
thinking  was  just  this;  How  could  such  a  thing 
happen,  if  there  be  a  good  God?  And  yet,  how 
not  ?  That  first  calamity  was  simply  the  penalty 
of  some  careless  handling  of  the  mighty  forces 
concerned.  I  believe  it  came  out  afterwards  that 
the  men  had  made  one  long  blast  to  serve  in- 
stead of  two  shorter  ones,  and  that,  in  a  coal- 
seam  in  which  a  liberal  keeping  of  nature's  re- 
quirement would  have  excluded  all  blasting.  I 
see  no  "  mystery  "  there,  simply  the  lesson  on 
a  terribly  large  scale  to  keep  more  loyally  the 
law  of  those  things  which  are  so  freely  given 
to  man  to  use.  But  the  loss  of  those  brave  ex- 
plorers? And  yet,  in  reality,  is  not  that  the 
noblest  element  in  the  whole  story?  Yes,  that 
they  should  offer  themselves,  that  they  should 
face  the  risk  for  their  fellows.  But  then,  would 
not  a  good  God  have  taken  care  of  them  and 
kept  them  harmless?  Where  would  be  the  hero- 
ism if  some  divine  protection  were  in  the  habit 
of  holding  such  "  forlorn  hopes  "  unscathed  ? 

Let  us  have  more  trust  —  the  very  kind  of 


234  THE    MYSTERY   OF   PAIN 

trust  these  men  had.  For  what  was  their  trust? 
That  the  fire  and  poisonous  gas  and  caving  rock 
could  not  hurt  them  or  kill  them  when  on  such 
an  errand?  No;  but  that,  if  they  were  on  such 
an  errand,  death  itself  was  not  a  thing  to  fear 
or  shun  or  trouble  about.  And  so  it  is.  I  can 
feel  pity  for  those  three  hundred  men  blown  to 
death  while  at  their  ordinary  work,  because  it 
seems  such  a  needless,  pitiful  waste  of  life  that 
had  no  business  ever  to  have  happened.  But, 
for  those  thirty-three  who  were  there  upon  that 
noble,  unselfish  errand,  I  feel  pity  to  be  utterly 
out  of  place.  No,  for  this  is  not  a  play  world 
in  which  the  sternest  dangers  are  make-believes, 
and  a  good  natured  God  waits  round  to  keep  his 
best  children,  at  least,  from  getting  hurt  or  killed. 
It  is  a  world  of  hard  realities,  and  awful,  un- 
swerving forces ;  and  the  goodness  of  that  mighty 
Life  that  works  through  it  is  seen,  not  in  some 
occasional  kind  checking  of  those  forces,  but  in 
this  —  that,  awful  and  unswerving  as  they  are, 
they  work  for  good,  in  nature  toward  beauty  and 
use,  in  man  toward  fuller  knowledge  and  wiser 
working ;  and  even  at  the  awfullest,  to  the  loftiest 
intensity  of  human  character. 

And  yet  one  thing  more,  to  end  with.  If  you 
wish  for  the  very  happiest  and  clearest  light 
upon    that    mystery    of    pain    you    will     find 


THE    MYSTERY   OF   PAIN  235 

it,  not  even  by  any  way  of  bearing  it  or 
looking  at  it,  but  by  going  right  into  it  and 
trying  to  make  it  a  little  less.  The  problem  that 
seems  to  defy  your  logic  becomes,  I  do  not  say 
transparent,  but  at  least  full  of  light  to  loving 
helpfulness.  I  hardly  know  how  it  should  be  so; 
but,  certainly  I  have  never  known  anyone  who 
has  taken  firm  hold  of  this  problem  of  pain  and 
who  is  spending  any  part  of  his  or  her  days  in 
really  grappling  with  it  and  trying  here  and 
there  to  lessen  it  and  heal  it  —  I  have  never 
known  such  an  one  to  feel  any  oppressive  dif- 
ficulty about  it.  It  is  those  who  look  on  it 
from  the  outside,  it  is  those  who  muse  over  it 
in  their  studies,  to  whom  pain  seems  to  lie  upon 
the  world  like  a  black  impenetrable  cloud.  Go 
into  that  cloud  and  you  find  that  in  and  out  of  it 
come  a  thousand  glints  of  light  and  use  and 
beautiful,  hopeful  meaning.  There,  not  in  the 
totality  of  pain  as  you  observe  it,  but  in  its  in- 
dividuality as  you  try  to  help  or  heal  it,  you 
begin  to  understand  its  wise  beneficent  part  in 
the  slow,  onward  development  of  man.  There, 
trying  to  help  or  heal,  it  comes  to  you  how  your 
loving  desire  is  but  a  tiny  impulse  of  the  great 
meaning  of  the  whole  —  that  whole  which  works 
not  only  through  dead  forces,  but  through  living 
hearts,   and  means  not  the  forces  only,   which 


236  THE    MYSTERY   OF   PAIN 

often  we  cannot  understand,  but  the  hearts  and 
the  hearts'  love  which  we  can  understand.  And 
so,  as  you  go  patiently  on,  doing  your  little  part 
in  the  helping  and  the  healing,  there  comes  a 
sense  of  how  the  threads,  both  of  our  working 
and  our  thinking,  lose  themselves  in  the  vast 
weavings  of  eternal  things.  And  here  we  are 
only  among  beginnings,  but  beginnings  that  keep 
moving  on;  and  so  the  mysteries  and  fears  and 
tremblings  of  earth  and  man  lose  themselves,  not 
in  chaos  and  darkness,  but  in  that  infinite  mean- 
ing and  infinite  beneficence  which  our  hearts 
adore  as  *'  God." 


LIFE  ON  THE  LINE  OF  LEAST 
RESISTANCE 

It  is  one  of  the  great  laws  of  the  material 
world  that  all  movement  must  take  place  along 
the  line  of  least  resistance.  Some  of  the  thinkers 
of  our  day  maintain  that  this  is  equally  true  of 
our  human  living,  and  that  it  is  right  for  it 
to  be  so.  It  does  not  seem  exactly  the  Master's 
Counsel,  indeed ;  "  Go  in  at  the  narrow  gate," 
he  puts  it,  "  not  at  the  wide  one ;  "  that  is  — 
"  Take  the  hard  way,  not  the  easy  one." 

Which  is  right?  It  is  worth  a  little  looking 
into.  You  know  in  the  present  time  there  is  a 
great  liking  for  large  generalizations,  which  may 
include  nature  and  man  in  one  category  and  one 
law.  This  is  just  one  of  those  generalizations 
—  and  it  is  worth  looking  into  to  see  whether 
it  is  true  —  or  whether  there  is  some  higher  ele- 
ment in  man  that  will  not  arrange  itself  with 
these  material  forces,  but  requires  some  higher 
explanation  and  seems  to  depend  on  some  higher 
law. 

First  of  all  let  us  get  a  clear  idea  of  what 

237 


22,^  THE   LINE   OF   LEAST   RESISTANCE 

this  law  is,  of  all  movement  having  to  be  on  the 
line  of  least  resistance.  Watch  it  in  its  very  sim- 
plest illustrations.  Pour  a  little  water  on  the 
ground  and  notice  what  becomes  of  it.  Its  little 
streams  move  slowly  in  this  or  that  direction  as 
if  feeling  about.  What  are  they  feeling  for? 
Simply  for  the  lines  of  least  resistance  —  the 
direction  in  which  there  is  least  to  obstruct  its 
flow.  But  it  is  not  only  in  such  a  slow  move- 
ment as  that  of  water  that  we  can  trace  this  law. 
When  a  gun  is  fired,  the  force  of  the  explosion 
is  really  equal  all  round,  but  it  is  obliged  to  find 
its  outlet  by  the  barrel  because  that  is  the  line 
along  which  there  is  least  resistance.  So  when 
a  steam  boiler  bursts,  the  direction  of  the  ex- 
plosion is  settled  by  the  same  law.  It  seems  a 
simple  matter  these  little  trickles  of  water  feel- 
ing for  a  slight  descent,  or  this  expansive  force 
breaking  out  at  the  weakest  point.  But  as  you 
watch  these  things  you  see  in  operation,  one  of 
the  mighty  laws  which  have  helped  to  mould  and 
to  develop  the  universe.  These  planets  find 
their  circling  orbit  through  the  vast  world-spaces, 
not  in  a  perfect  circle,  but  just  where  the  balanc- 
ing and  counteracting  attractions  of  sun  and 
stars  leave  the  least  resistance  to  that  unknown 
force  which  impels  them  on.  The  great  air-cur- 
rents by  which  the  signal  service  watchers  fore- 


THE    LINE    OF   LEAST    RESISTANCE  239 

cast  a  storm  or  the  rise  or  fall  of  temperature,  il- 
lustrate the  same  law.  Nor  is  this  only  the 
principle  of  movement  for  dead  matter.  Ex- 
amine the  winding  twisting  fibres  at  the  root  of 
a  tree.  Those  tiny  cells  that  keep  being  added 
at  the  extremity  insinuate  themselves  through 
the  interstices  of  the  soil,  or  the  crannies  of  the 
rock  in  search  of  moisture  just  where  at  each 
point  there  is  the  least  resistance.  In  reality,  it 
is  probable  that  this  principle  is  operating  in 
every  movement  of  animated  nature,  from  the 
swerving  aside  of  a  runaway  horse  if  you  try  to 
stop  it,  to  the  slow,  gradual  changes  of  place, 
food  and  habit,  which,  through  the  long  cycles 
of  human  time,  have  regulated  the  course  of  de- 
velopment and  the  survival  of  the  fittest.  Her- 
bert Spencer,  from  whom  some  of  these  illus- 
trations are  borrowed,  traces  this  principle  right 
onward  into  human  action,  too,  and  believes  that 
it  both  explains  man's  past  and  conditions  his 
future.  There,  however,  the  questioning  comes 
in. 

Let  it  be  frankly  admitted  that  the  law  of 
"  Life  on  the  line  of  least  resistance  "  does  in- 
terpret a  good  deal  of  human  action  —  It  is  very 
interesting  to  trace  it.  It  interprets  all  that  part 
of  life  in  which  man  is  still  simply  one  of  the 
animals.     The    struggle    to    supply    the    animal 


240  THE   LINE   OF   LEAST   RESISTANCE 

wants,  the  first  groupings  of  society,  the  large, 
hardly  conscious  movements  of  peoples  —  all  fol- 
low this  law.  Man  stands  in  the  midst  of  the 
vast  nature,  needing  to  live  and  having  to  put 
forth  his  powers  in  order  to  obtain  food,  cloth- 
ing, warmth,  safety.  Nature  more  or  less  resists 
his  efforts.  A  sort  of  antagonistic  pressure  sur- 
rounds him.  Man's  life  tends  to  those  ways,  to 
those  places,  where  this  pressure  is  least.  Thus 
the  sheltered  valleys  are  peopled  before  the  bleak 
hills  or  plains.  Thus  population  spreads  along 
sea  shore,  where  there  is  always  food  for  the 
catching.  Thus  migration  takes  place  from 
countries  where  life  is  difficult  to  those  where  it 
is  easy.  Human  industry  flows  to  those  occu- 
pations in  which,  as  we  say  there  is  most  room 
and  in  which,  consequently,  life's  wants  are  sup- 
plied with  least  difficulty.  So  with  the  lines  of 
human  communication.  The  primitive  roads 
over  moor  and  fell  and  the  carefully  planned  rail- 
road across  a  country,  are  alike  directed  by  the 
line  of  least  resistance. 

So  far  then  we  trace  the  law,  through  inani- 
mate matter  and  through  animated  Nature  up 
to  man;  and  even  in  man's  doings  where  those 
doings  are  impersonal,  in  large  sweepings  of  ten- 
dency or  movement  which  are  independent  of  in- 
dividual will;  in  fact  we  trace  this  law  till  we 


THE    LINE   OF    LEAST    RESISTANCE  24I 

come  to  doings  which  depend  on  individual  will 
and  personal  character.  But  there  we  have  to 
pause.  When  we  come  to  man's  free,  individual 
life,  the  law  no  longer  holds,  at  least  not  in  the 
same  way.  It  no  longer  holds  as  a  self-acting, 
automatic  law,  dominating  man  without  any 
consciousness  on  his  part.  The  fact  that  man's 
life  is  conscious  introduces  quite  a  new  factor. 
The  question  arises:  is  this  law  of  motion  along 
the  line  of  least  resistance  a  law  which  man  ought 
to  set  before  himself?  and  I  cannot  look  out  on 
man's  common  life  without  feeling  that  it  is  not. 
It  may  seem  curious  that  as  soon  as  man  comes 
to  his  own  voluntary  life,  he  should  have  to  break 
away  from  the  law  which  has  brought  him  so 
far,  but  so  it  is.  From  the  moment  man  be- 
comes a  self-conscious  being,  thinking  of  his  own 
actions  and  of  the  right  and  wrong  of  them  — 
from  that  moment,  no  more  life  merely  on  the 
line  of  least  resistance.  From  that  moment  all 
the  further  progress  of  life  and  all  the  dignity 
and  moral  worth  of  life  may  be  said  to  depend 
on  his  living,  not  on  the  line  of  least  resistance 
but  almost  the  contrary.  Of  course  it  is  not  so 
absolutely.  The  moral  value  of  an  action  can 
be  no  more  decided  absolutely  by  its  being  hard 
than  by  its  being  easy;  but  certainly  the  idea  of 
the  true  thing  being  to  look  out  for  the  easy  way 


242  THE   LINE   OF   LEAST   RESISTANCE 

is  scattered  to  the  winds.  And  mark,  this  is  not 
because  the  terms  no  longer  apply.  The  terms 
do  apply,  they  fit  with  a  curious  aptitude.  That 
idea  of  acting  on  the  line  of  least  resistance  is 
very  easy  to  translate  into  life,  but  it  gives  the 
wrong  sort  of  life.  You  can  see  plenty  of  ap- 
plications of  it,  parallels  for  almost  every  illus- 
tration I  have  given  from  Nature.  Take  that 
of  water  on  the  ground,  feeling  about  for  its 
line  of  least  resistance.  Have  you  never  seen 
that  in  life?  People  whose  whole  course  is  just 
that  limp  feeling  about  for  the  easiest  way;  who 
are  always  trying  to  get  along  with  the  minimum 
of  effort  and  trouble,  who  endeavour  to  dodge 
round  every  difficulty  and  obstacle?  There  is 
your  "  life  on  the  line  of  least  resistance,"  only 
it  is  the  wrong  kind  of  life.  When  a  man  gets 
into  a  passion  and  instead  of  venting  it  on  some 
equal,  who  would  talk  back,  vents  it  on  his  er- 
rand-boy or  his  dog  —  that  is  passion  on  the  line 
of  least  resistance  —  but  it  certainly  does  not 
make  the  passion  better.  Yes,  it  is  very  easy  to 
understand,  and  dreadfully  easy  to  carry  out,  this 
physical  law,  but  it  is  pretty  poor  to  set  up  as 
a  law  of  life,  for  it  gives  the  wrong  kind  of  life 
every  time.  No  lack  of  opportunity  for  seeing 
how  it  works,  for  a  great  deal  of  the  life  of  the 
world  is  lived  exactly  on  this  principle.     Every 


THE    LINE   OF    LEAST   RESISTANCE  243 

man  who  puts  off  till  to-morrow  what  he  ought 
to  do  to-day;  every  man  who  sits  at  home  with 
his  slippers  on  when  he  ought  to  go  to  a  commit- 
tee or  a  meeting;  every  business  man  who  shirks 
balancing  his  books  because  of  what  he  is  afraid 
to  find  confronting  him  there;  every  politician 
who  trims  his  principles  to  stave  off  awkward 
opposition  —  all  these  are  exact  illustrations  of 
acting  on  the  line  of  least  resistance.  And  this 
is  not  the  poorest  kind  of  the  life  it  leads  to. 
The  confirmed  idler  who  does  not  do  what  he 
ought  either  to-day  or  to-morrow;  the  tramp 
who  slips  into  mendicancy  because  begging  is 
easier  than  working;  the  criminal  who  slips  into 
thieving  because  thieving  is  easier  than  either 
working  or  begging  —  all  these  are  fair  actual 
illustrations,  of  trying  to  continue  into  the  free 
life  of  man,  the  principle  of  movement  on  the 
line  of  least  resistance. 

On  the  other  hand,  all  that  is  great,  all  that 
is  noble,  all  that  is  progressive  in  man's  life,  has 
been  attained  not  along  that  line,  but  quite  in- 
dependent of  it;  often  along  the  exactly  opposite 
line.  The  story  of  all  great  achievements,  of  all 
lives  steadfastly  pursuing  noble  ends,  of  all  re- 
forms wrought  through  tribulation  and  disap- 
pointment to  final  victory,  has  ever  been  the 
story  of  men  choosing  not  the  easier  way,  but 


244  THE    LINE   OF    LEAST   RESISTANCE 

the  harder,  and  finding  it,  mostly,  even  harder 
than  they  dreamed,  and  still  holding  right  on. 
When  Hu^s  and  Wycliffe  began  the  movements 
v^hich,  a  century  or  more  later,  were  to  becomxC 
the  Reformation  —  well.  Reformation,  even  in 
Luther's  time,  with  all  the  increased  prepared- 
ness of  the  world  was  hardly  a  movement  on  the 
line  of  least  resistance — (it  would  have  been 
easier  to  have  let  it  alone,  even  then)  but  what 
was  it  in  its  beginnings,  when  the  resistance  was 
so  fierce  that  it  brought  Huss  to  the  stake  and 
scattered  Wycliffe's  desecrated  ashes  to  the 
winds?  And  you  see  the  same  thing  when  you 
look  at  life  now,  in  any  of  its  stronger,  nobler, 
aspects.  It  is  not  along  the  line  of  least  re- 
sistance that  poor  lads  have  forced  their  way  to 
fortune,  and  dwellers  in  humble  garrets  strug- 
gled into  fame;  or  that  the  patient  workers  of 
Science  have  groped  and  dug  their  way  into  the 
deep  and  secret  lore  of  Nature.  No !  Even  the 
busy  mother,  who  is  beset  by  a  hundred  cares  to 
keep  the  home  things  sweet  and  comely,  and 
sometimes  feels  as  if  it  would  be  such  a  relief  to 
give  it  all  up  and  let  everything  go,  but  never 
does,  —  that  is  not  life  along  the  line  of  least 
resistance. 

And  see!     All  this  is  not  affected  by  the  fact 
that   there   are   other    resistances   besides   those 


THE    LINE    OF    LEAST    RESISTANCE  245 

which  people  see  at  the  moment,  and  which  often 
make  what  seems  to  begin  with,  the  easiest  way, 
eventually  the  hardest.     I  know  it.     "  The  way 
of  transgressors  is  hard  "  —  at  least,  it  is  going 
to  be.     And  the  way  of  the  righteous  is  going 
to  be  easier  by  and  bye,  though  it  would  be  dif- 
ficult to  make  out  that  it  is,  ever,  the  easiest.    But 
this  does  not  touch  the  question.     If  you  want 
to  know  whether  this  natural  law  in  the  lower 
level  of  things  is  also  to  be  the  law  man  should 
hold  up  before  himself,  watch  the  law  as  it  is. 
These  further  resistances  and  readjustments  are 
precisely  what  the  natural  law  takes  no  account 
of.     Does  the  water,  when  it  comes  to  the  edge 
of  a  slight  depression,  abstain  from  going  down 
because  a  little  way  on  the  ground  rises  again 
so  that  there  is  no  real  outlet  that  way?     No. 
And    so    your    easy    going   procrastinator    who 
shirks  his  work  to-day,  even  though  he  knows 
perfectly  well  it  will  be  harder  to-morrow,  is  a 
true  parallel,  not  a  sham  one.     Only,  that  which 
is  right  and  good  for  the  water  is  wrong  and 
bad   for  the  man.      Even   in  those  human   en- 
terprises in  which  the  line  of  least  resistance  is 
the  actual   desideratum,   man's   agency  at  once 
introduces  a  new  and  higher  element.     The  en- 
gineers, cutting  a  line  of  railway  have  to  seek 
the  line  of  least  resistance ;  but  they  have  to  do  so 


246  THE   LINE   OF   LEAST   RESISTANCE 

on  the  survey  of  the  whole  country  and  often 
must  choose  the  more  difficult  way  to  begin 
with,  in  order  to  avoid  some  worse  obstacle 
further  on.  The  fact  is,  the  moment  you  touch 
man's  life,  a  whole  set  of  higher  principles  comes 
in;  and  what  we  need  to  do  is  to  keep  those 
higher  principles  foremost  in  our  thought ;  and  to 
try  to  explain  them  in  the  terms  of  something 
quite  lower  is  not  to  help  us  but  to  confuse  us. 
Not  what  is  the  line  of  least  resistance,  but  what 
is  the  line  of  right,  is  the  thought  really  to  guide 
us.  Even  if  it  could  be  shown  that  in  some  final 
working  out  of  things,  the  line  of  right  will 
turn  out  also  to  be  that  of  least  resistance,  that 
does  not  help,  because  that  line  will  still  only 
be  found  by  looking  out  for  the  right.  But  it 
cannot  be  shewn;  and  every  thought  of  it  only 
distracts  and  weakens  our  hold  upon  the  simple 
consideration  of  right.  There  is  a  poor  fellow, 
for  instance,  in  some  sore  temptation.  He  is 
hesitating  on  the  threshold  of  some  sin,  and  the 
way  is  dreadfully  open,  and  every  fibre  of  his 
senses  is  enticing  him  in.  Yet  he  is  trying  to 
rally  his  soul  to  the  right.  Go  to  him  and  tell 
him  that  the  law  of  the  Universe  is,  to  choose 
the  line  of  least  resistance.  Can  you  undo  the 
demoralising  effect  of  such  a  word  by  any  ar- 
gument to  shew  that  what  you  mean  is,  that  the 


THE    LINE   OF    LEAST    RESISTANCE  247 

path  of  eventually  least  resistance  is  away  from 
that  temptation?  Or  go  to  some  struggling  re- 
former, whose  life  year  after  year  has  been  one 
long  battling  against  the  stream  —  and  try  your 
philosophy  on  him.  "  My  friend,  the  real  law 
of  life  is  to  choose  the  line  of  least  resistance." 
Why,  if  he  believes  you,  he  will  be  halfway  down 
stream,  drifting  with  the  current  and  finding  it 
so  easy  —  before  you  can  reach  him  with  even 
the  first  word  of  your  explanation  that  he  should 
still  go  struggling  on,  up-stream,  because  there 
he  would  eventually  find  that  *'  least  resistance." 
Do  you  not  see?  You  fancy  you  have  got  a 
great  beautiful  generalisation  which  proclaims 
itself  a  sort  of  universal  law,  and  lo!  the  mo- 
ment you  try  to  apply  it  practically,  it  leads  you 
to  weakness  and  confusion,  and  so  far  as  you 
think  of  it  at  all,  it  is  a  principle  rather  to  avoid 
than  to  follow. 

It  all  comes  simply  to  this :  that  all  these  at- 
tempts to  make  the  higher  life  of  man  clearer 
by  referring  back  to  mere  material  things,  as  if 
they  were  a  little  more  reliable,  are  vain ;  and  so 
we  are  thrown  back  upon  the  higher  life  itself, 
and  its  own  consciousness,  and  the  great  expres- 
sions of  it  in  these  grand  old-world  teachings 
of  simple  right;  and  all  these  come  back  with  a 
new  emphasis  and  power.    This  moral  conscious- 


248  THE   LINE   OF   LEAST   RESISTANCE 

ness  of  mankind,  which  has  kept  growing  with 
man's  growth,  developing  as  part  of  his  develop- 
ment, is  just  as  certain  as  his  physical  science. 
The  higher  things  may  not  be  as  exactly  defin- 
able, as  the  lower;  but  they  are  quite  as  real  and 
in  the  main  lines  of  them  just  as  clear. 

Every  now  and  then  along  the  ages  there 
comes  a  sort  of  chill  over  the  ancient  trust  and 
faith  of  man,  in  all  that  higher  life.  It  has  been 
so  to  some  extent,  in  this  past  generation.  The 
sharp  clear  light  of  science  has  flamed  up,  and  the 
old  moral  and  religious  lights  of  the  world  have 
seemed  a  little  dim  and  uncertain  in  the  new  elec- 
tric glare.  Science  has  become  so  wonderful 
and  withal  has  revealed  its  truths  in  such  sharp 
clear  outline,  and  such  hard  palpable  reality,  that 
it  has  seemed  sometimes  as  if  its  truths  and  laws 
must  be  about  to  take  the  place  of  those  vague 
old-fashioned  laws  of  the  moral  life  and  of  the 
vague  undefined  sentiments  of  religion. 

But  no.  The  further  we  go  on,  the  further 
science  itself  goes  on,  the  more  we  find  that 
there  is  something  in  the  life  of  man  different 
from  anything  and  everything  else.  Try  how 
you  will  to  generalise  man's  life  into  line  with 
mere  material  nature,  you  cannot  do  it.  You 
can  generalise  a  part  of  man  on  the  material 
line,  and  that  so  thoroughly  that  you  are  tempted 


THE   LINE   OF   LEAST   RESISTANCE  249 

to  think  the  whole  of  him  might  be  treated  so 
—  but  simply,  when  you  have  done  all  you  can, 
whole  realms  of  man's  being  remain  out  of  line. 
Before  the  struggle  with  temptation,  before  the 
grief  of  Penitence,  before  the  self-sacrifice  of 
Love,  the  laws  of  matter  which  we  try  to  fit  to 
everything,   fall,  helpless  and  meaningless. 

And  so  in  these  greater  things  of  life,  we  have 
to  go  back  to  the  old  light  and  the  old  helpers. 
Here,  in  the  old  v/ays  and  the  old  words,  in 
which  our  fathers  and  long  centuries  of  strug- 
gling men  strengthened  their  hearts  to  bear  their 
burdens  and  to  do  their  duty  —  here  is  the  light 
to  guide  us  still,  and  most  of  all  it  is  in  Him, 
above  all  others,  who  has  been  the  very  Light  of 
the  World.  From  all  that  thought  which  would 
try  to  find  some  all  embracing  law  of  life  in 
the  physical  law  of  movement  on  the  line  of 
least  resistance,  I  turn  back  again  to  the  old 
counsel  of  the  Master  to  seek  rather  the  harder 
way  and  to  distrust  that  line  of  least  resistance, 
the  "  broad  and  pleasant  way,"  as  a  way  that 
*'  leadeth  to  destruction." 

Yes ;  "  enter  ye  in  at  the  strait  gate,"  the 
*'  hard  and  narrow  way,"  It  is  not  the  line  of 
"  least  resistance,"  and  no  logic  of  generalisation 
can  make  it  that  for  any  practical  guidance;  but 
it  is  the  line  of  right;  it  is  the  line  of  real  on- 


250  THE   LINE   OF   LEAST   RESISTANCE 

ward  life;  it  is  the  line  of  a  peaceful  conscience 
and  a  quiet  heart;  and  as  you  go  on  in  it,  its 
hardness  shall  grow  less,  its  grade  less  steep,  and 
if  you  will  go  on  in  it,  and  keep  on  patiently, 
you  shall  find  the  truth  of  that  other  grand  word, 
that  "  the  pathway  of  the  just  is  as  the  shin- 
ing light,  that  shineth  more  and  more  unto  the 
perfect  day." 


ONE  OF  THE  MEANINGS  OF  GREAT 
CATASTROPHES 

What  about  that  terrible  famine  in  India, 
what  about  the  Java  eruption?  How  do  these 
great  calamities  which  come  simply  from  the 
operation  of  the  mighty  laws  and  forces  of  Na- 
ture, mostly  apart  from  any  responsibilty  of  man 
—  how  do  these  fit  in  with  the  idea  of  the  eternal 
goodness  ?  Most  of  what  men  call  accidents  — 
fires,  shipwrecks,  and  so  forth  —  we  can  in  a 
sense  understand.  They  are  mostly  the  penalty  of 
broken  law,  of  some  carelessness  in  the  handling 
of  those  mighty  edge-tools,  the  forces  of  Nature. 
They  are  educators,  stern  but  beneficent,  —  benef- 
icent by  their  very  inexorableness.  If  we  are 
to  use  steam  or  electricity,  it  is  best  that  the 
power  of  them  should  be  absolute  —  so  we  know 
what  we  are  doing.  But  the  great  natural  catas- 
trophes and  destructions  are  different.  When 
some  twenty  years  ago  that  awful  tide- wave 
swept  the  coast  of  India  for  hundreds  of  miles, 
destroying   some   quarter   of   a   million   lives  — 

251 


252      ONE    MEANING   OF   GREAT   CATASTROPHES 

no  human  foresight  could  have  done  much  to 
lessen  the  horror.  And  now  in  this  terrible  fam- 
ine —  over  extents  of  country  about  equal  to  the 
whole  of  France  —  Why,  foresight  might  per- 
haps have  made  more  provision  of  water  or 
food  than  it  has  done  —  though  I  believe  the  ir- 
rigation of  India  is  better  on  the  whole  than  ever 
before,  but  still  in  the  large  sweep  of  it,  it  was 
quite  beyond  human  forecast  or  prevention.  And 
what  is  the  meaning  of  it  all  ?  How  it  all  comes 
right  in  face  of  our  worship  of  an  Infinite  good- 
ness; our  words  about  God's  faithful  providence, 
all  the  old  words,  that  men  have  been  saying 
or  singing  since  the  Psalmist's  time,  of  trust  in 
God's  tender  care!  It  forces  back  upon  us  the 
question  whether  we  use  words  that  have  no  real 
meaning?  Is  that  old  thought  of  a  gracious 
providence,  all  a  mistake?  Is  this  world  really 
in  the  hold  of  some  blind  force  or  forces,  to 
which  our  safety  and  happiness,  our  cries  and 
tears,  are  all  alike  indifferent?  No!  I  do  not 
think  we  feel  so.  "  Though  he  slay  me,  yet  will 
I  trust  in  Him."  Our  faith  in  God  is  not  of 
yesterday.  Our  sense  of  the  general  beneficence 
of  things,  of  the  trend  of  good  in  the  vast  order 
which  has  evolved  and  is  always  evolving  the 
world,  is  too  strongly  based  to  be  really  or  per- 
manently endangered   by   any  bewilderment   at 


ONE    MEANING   OF   GREAT   CATASTROPHES      253 

parts  of  the  great  process  which  we  cannot  under- 
stand. But  even  though  people  may  reassure 
their  souls,  that  it  must  surely  be  right  and  good 
on  the  whole,  they  still  cannot  help  feeling  the 
bewilderment.  They  crave  for  some  light,  some 
meaning  in  such  a  calamity. 

If  it  does  not  mean  passionless  indifference, 
what  does  it  mean? 

I  am  no  prophet,  to  interpret  to  you  such 
things  as  this,  and  to  say  why  the  Almighty 
power  and  wisdom  suffers  such  irregularities  to 
come  even  in  the  working  out  of  his  most  trusted 
seasons.  I  cannot  stand  here  and  say:  This 
or  this  is  the  meaning  of  the  Infinite  Life,  in  such 
things.  No.  And  yet  as  I  think  it  all  over,  and 
over  again — there  is  one  little  side-light  of  mean- 
ing which  does  seem  to  appear  —  not  any  ex- 
planation of  such  calamities,  not  why  they  are; 
no,  —  but  one  meaning  which  they  seem  to  flash 
out  upon  us  as  they  go  along. 

I  can  put  the  whole  thing  in  a  single  sentence. 
I  said  just  now,  that  such  a  shock  of  widespread 
failure  or  destruction  makes  us  ask  —  does  it 
mean  that  the  Great  Father-life  of  the  universe 
does  not  care  for  us  ?  No,  it  does  not  mean  that 
—  but  it  does  seem  to  mean  that  He  does  not  care 
much  for  our  bodies !  It  does  seem  to  mean  that 
in  is  great  world-plan  the  body  —  that,  remem- 


254      ONE    MEANING   OF    GREAT    CATASTROPHES 

ber,  which  man  is  always  concerning  himself  most 
about,  is  in  God's  sight  comparatively  nothing, 
hardly  worth  taking  into  account,  not  worth  step- 
ping aside  for.  It  is  the  higher  life  in  it,  what  we 
call  the  soul,  God  seems  to  care  for.  The  body 
has  just  to  take  its  chance  (so  to  speak)  among 
the  other  things  of  earth. 

Now,  this  is  something  worth  looking  into. 
Take,  first,  man's  thought,  the  relative  value 
man  is  apt  to  set  on  his  body  and  on  his  soul, 
and  then  we  begin  to  see  the  significance  of  the 
very  different  proportion  in  which  the  divine 
world-plan  seems  to  hold  them. 

One  cannot  look  out  into  the  world,  without 
seeing  that  what  man  feels  most  of  in  himself, 
believes  in  most,  cares  infinitely  the  most  for, 
is — the  body.  Men  generally,  believe  that  they 
have  souls,  but  the  body  is  what  they  really 
seem  to  live  for.  I  am  not  speaking  of  bad 
men;  but  of  how  average  human  life  lives  this 
way.  The  whole  arrangements  of  ordinary  life 
are  those  of  beings  who  feel  that  the  real  sub- 
stantial thing,  is,  to  enjoy  this  present  life,  to 
get  together  all  that  is  possible  of  its  good  each 
year.  It  is  by  success  or  failure  in  this  that 
men  take  their  rank  in  earthly  society.  Indeed, 
by  '^  success "  or  ''failure  "  men  almost  always 
mean  success  or  failure  in  bodily  earthly  things. 


ONE    MEANING    OF    GREAT    CATASTROPHES       255 

*'  What  is  a  man  worth  "  ?  Means  —  how  much 
material  treasure?  Even  the  very  charities 
and  kindnesses  of  the  world,  evince  the  same 
thing.  They  look  to  the  bodily  life  more  than 
to  anything  else.  Men  do  not  like  to  see  their 
fellows  suffering  cold  or  hunger,  living  amid 
unwholesomeness  and  dirt,  or  in  sickness  or  dis- 
ease. Those  are  the  "  problems  "  which  weigh 
upon  ''  society."  Yet  all  the  time,  there  are 
infinitely  sadder  things  —  and  that,  among  peo- 
ple who  are  neither  starving,  nor  ragged,  nor 
dirty  —  who  in  every  bodily  respect  are  as  well 
off  as  need  be  —  but  whose  real  being,  in  the 
innermost  fact  of  it,  is  starved,  and  ragged,  and 
steeped  in  uncleanness  worse  than  any  outward 
dirt.  And  as  you  see  this  in  men's  ways  of  us- 
ing life,  so  you  see  it  in  their  way  of  looking 
at  sickness  and  death.  To  most  people,  sick- 
ness seems  so  much  taken  off  from  their  avail- 
able life,  —  and  when  death,  as  we  call  it,  comes, 
that  seems  like  the  end  of  anything  worth  really 
reckoning  as  life.  People  may  talk  about  the 
joys  of  immortality,  but  what  the  most  really 
want,  is,  to  keep  hold,  to  the  uttermost  moment 
possible,  of  the  body's  life,  here  among  the 
things  of  earth.  Anything,  even  for  a  few  days 
more  of  it,  —  or  even  a  few  hours.  That  is 
why  men  feel  these  catastrophes  and  destructions 


256      ONE    MEANING   OF   GREAT   CATASTROPHES 

of  the  bodily  life  so  great  a  trial  to  their  trust 
in  God.  Men  do  not  distrust  God  because  they 
see  men  sinning.  A  whole  city  full  of  souls, 
may  be,  as  to  many  of  them,  in  a  state  sadder 
than  death,  and  the  religious  life  goes  on  with 
its  prayer  and  uplook  as  usual.  But  let  a  hun- 
dred or  two  bodies  be  suddenly  maimed  or  de- 
stroyed, and  straightway  there  is  a  widespread 
shuddering  at  the  horror  of  it,  and  men  begin 
crying  out  —  how  can  a  good  God  let  such 
things  be?  Yes;  there  it  is;  it  is  life  in  its  bod- 
ily, earthly  frame  and  use,  that  people  think 
of  first  and  last.  It  is  this  they  see,  and  care 
for  in  themselves,  this  to  which  they  most  min- 
ister in  others;  it  is  for  getting  more  out  of 
this  they  spend  their  strength;  it  is  for  the  gen- 
eral happiness  of  this  that  they  extol  God's  good- 
ness; it  is  the  calamities  of  this  which  most 
trouble  their  faith,  it  is  for  the  sparing  of  this  a 
little  longer  that  they  lift  up  the  most  agonized 
prayers. 

There  it  is  that  there  comes  in  this  lesson 
which  —  I  do  not  say  is  what  God  means  to 
teach,  but  which  certainly  does  appear  out  of 
these  great  calamities.  It  seems  as  if  they  put 
it  to  us,  sometimes  with  startling,  and  almost 
cruel  plainness,  that  our  estimate  of  the  body 
and  the  bodily  life,  is  all  wrong,  at  any  rate  that 


ONE   MEANING   OF   GREAT   CATASTROPHES      25/ 

it  is  not  the  estimate  that  Nature,  and  the  Lord 
of  Nature,  put  upon  it.  Why,  we  might  learn 
this,  from  the  very  place  our  bodies  hold  in  the 
universe.  They  just  have  to  stand  or  fall,  with 
the  common  run  of  earthly  things.  They  are 
of  the  earth,  earthy.  Nay,  if  they  were  man's 
all,  the  case  is  even  worse.  Man  has  hardships 
and  difficulties  of  which  the  brutes  know 
nothing.  All  things  point  to  bodily  happi- 
ness as  what  the  brutes  are  created  for,  but 
they  do  not  point  so  in  man's  case.  They 
have  their  wants  supplied  with  less  labour, 
more  as  a  part  of  the  natural  working  of  things, 
than  man  has.  What  a  different  spectacle  —  the 
birds  going  forth  in  the  morning  to  get  their 
daily  bread,  and  men  and  women  going  forth  to 
get  theirs.  What  do  birds  know  of  the  strain 
of  care?  The  ordering  of  nature  in  the  matter 
of  wholeness  and  health  tells  the  same  story, 
—  seems  to  show  that  with  other  creatures,  the 
body  is  the  dominant  consideration;  that,  with 
man,  it  is  a  secondary  consideration,  subordinate 
to,  leading  up  to  something  else.  And  this  is 
what  has  to  be  constantly  kept  in  mind.  For 
the  lesson  that  we  learn  as  catastrophes  pass  by, 
of  the  comparative  unimportance  of  the  body,  of 
how  comparatively  little  God  cares  for  it,  does 
not  stand  alone  as  a  mere  negative  lesson  —  No, 


258      ONE   MEANING   OF   GREAT   CATASTROPHES 

it  keeps  carrying  with  it  the  positive  lesson,  — 
of  the  worth  and  glory  of  the  higher  element 
in  man.  For  see;  that  providence  which  seems 
so  curiously  indifferent  to  our  bodies,  lavishes 
its  finest  and  most  wondrous  influences  upon  the 
soul.  All  the  divinest  power  of  His  Working 
seems  to  concentrate  itself  upon  the  soul.  So, 
things  that  with  the  beasts  have  only  a  material, 
bodily  significance,  with  man  have  a  moral  and 
spiritual  use.  Labour,  and  the  strain  of  care 
—  all  that  side  of  life  which  goes  to  supplying  the 
means  of  living  —  are  with  man  (quite  above 
what  they  are  to  the  beasts)  the  means  of 
strengthening  and  developing  that  higher  element 
of  mind,  and  soul-life.  Pain  and  sickness  are  al- 
most unknown  among  animals.  If  they  are 
crippled  or  diseased,  and  when  their  powers  are 
failing  —  Nature  makes  an  end  of  them.  But 
sickness,  pain,  and  the  weakening  powers  of  old 
age  are  a  part  of  the  essential  lot  of  man.  God 
causes  human  beings  to  be  kept  living  on  for  years, 
in  bodily  life  so  weak  or  painful  that  animals 
would  not  be  kept  in  it  for  as  many  days.  Why  ? 
Because  what  God  is  caring  for  and  working 
for  is,  the  soul.  Man's  body  is  his  for  the  sake 
of  the  soul ;  and  long  after  it  has  become  a  poor, 
pleasureless  thing  considered  as  a  body,  it  still 
may  do  for  the  soul  to  live  and  grow  in,  and  in- 


ONE   MEANING   OF   GREAT   CATASTROPHES      259 

deed  its  very  pain  and  helpfulness  may  be  help- 
ful discipline  for  the  soul.  So  nature  —  through 
human  instinct  and  feeling,  if  you  will  —  lets 
man  live  on,  even  provides  for  his  being  helped 
to  live  on,  long  after  the  animal  would  have  been 
mercifully  put  out  of  its  misery. 

It  is  simply  the  same  fact  —  a  sort  of  divine 
indifference  to  the  body  part  of  man,  which 
comes  out  in  these  destructions.  Here  are  we  — 
thinking  so  much  of  our  bodies,  toiling  for  them, 
studying  how  to  pamper  them,  guarding  them 
so  carefully  from  every  wound  or  pain,  —  and 
meanwhile  God's  working  in  the  earth  sweeps  on, 
and  takes  no  more  notice  of  our  bodies  than 
of  so  many  flies.  Sometimes  it  is  one  that  per- 
ishes in  some  sweep  of  force,  sometimes  a  dozen 
at  once  —  now  and  then  hundreds ;  —  once  in 
years  comes  some  giant  catastrophe  that  destroys 
half  a  people  and  sends  a  shudder  through  the 
whole  race.  ''Can  God  be  good?"  men  cry 
—  but  all  goes  impassively  on.  His  mighty 
forces  turn  neither  to  the  right  hand  nor  the 
left.  Again,  it  is  not  that  He  does  not  care 
for  us,  no,  but  apparently  that  He  does  not 
care  much  for  our  bodies.  But  here  is  the  unit- 
ing truth :  it  seems  as  if  He  does  not  count  these 
bodies  to  be  us:  only  the  temporary  clothing  of 
us. 


26o      ONE   MEANING   OF   GREAT   CATASTROPHES 

Long  ago  when  I  was  living  among  the  great 
cotton  factories  there  was  a  great  sensation 
among  the  workpeople,  for  an  accident  that  had 
happened.  A  man  had  been  cleaning  some  ma- 
chinery while  it  was  going,  and  the  great  re- 
volving strap  had  caught  his  shirt  sleeve,  and  — 
no!  it  had  not  drawn  him  in;  his  clothing  was 
old  and  worn,  and  simply  it  had  dragged  it  in, 
and  stripped  every  rag  of  it  off  him,  and  left 
him  standing  there  as  naked  as  he  was  born ! 

Was  he  sorry  that  his  clothes  were  poor  and 
worn?  Nay,  rather  thankful,  that  it  was  they 
that  went  and  not  he.  And  so  it  may  be  that 
God  does  not  count  these  bodies  to  be  us;  it  is 
not  these  bodies  that  He  is  Father  to,  and  loves, 
and  cares  for.  Even  the  body,  indeed,  is  a  won- 
derful thing;  and  yet  what  a  mere  rough  affair 
it  is,  compared  to  that  wonderful  life  that  dwells 
in  it,  and  uses  it,  and  is  its  motive  power.  And 
as  he  has  made  this  soul-life  the  most  wonder- 
ful, so  He  deals  the  most  wonderfully  with  it. 
All  that  tenderness  of  individual  care  which  we 
are  often  disappointed  that  He  does  not  have 
for  our  bodies.  He  does  have  for  our  souls. 
There,  He  meets  with  us  spirit  to  spirit.  There 
it  is  that  we  come  into  our  true  relation  to  Him, 
are  conscious  of  Kinship  to  Him.  And  here  it 
is  that  we  find  the  most  subtle,  wonderful  work- 


ONE    MEANING   OF    GREAT    CATASTROPHES       261 

ing  of  His  creating  and  evolving  power.  What 
is  the  evolution  of  man's  outward  body,  com- 
pared with  the  evolution  of  that  inward  being, 
of  intellect,  conscience,  affection  ?  These  are  the 
greatest  things.  These  are  the  things  that  dom- 
inate the  world.  They  make  up  the  sphere  in 
which  the  Infinite  spirit  touches  our  souls,  re- 
sponsive to  our  seeking,  with  guidance,  comfort, 
strength.  The  Development  is  ever  upward,  and 
in  that  development  catastrophes  are  part  of  the 
teaching  power.  When  man  has  yet  hardly  risen 
above  the  beasts,  famine  is  already  one  of  his 
great  teachers,  sending  him  to  the  river  borders, 
teaching  him  prudence,  foresight,  lifting  him 
from  the  wild  comrade-ship  of  the  desert,  to  the 
ordered  civilisation  of  the  Nile.  As  he  grows 
still  upwards,  and  learns  to  ward  off  much  of 
the  original  calamity  and  destruction,  what  yet 
remains  of  it,  forms  the  occasion  and  the  in- 
centive to  the  very  noblest  developments  of  char- 
acter. 

This,  then,  I  might  almost  put  as  one  of  the 
higher  meanings  of  great  catastrophes,  —  not 
merely  the  negative  meaning  of  how  the  great 
Power  that  causes  us  to  be  does  not  seem  to 
care  much  for  our  bodies  —  yet  far  more  is  the 
lesson  of  the  exceeding  preciousness  of  the  higher 
life,  our  life  as  souls,  and  the  way  these  things 


262      ONE   MEANING   OF   GREAT   CATASTROPHES 


draw  life  into  closer  brotherhood  and  lift  it  to 
its  intensest  power  and  grandest  height,  and  help 
to  nurture  the  finest  nobleness  of  the  world. 


IMMORTALITY,    WHETHER   WE    WISH 
FOR  IT  OR  NOT 

Always  as  I  read  how  as  Jesus  was  in  the  way 
"  there  came  one  running,  and  kneeled  to  him 
and  asked  him  —  *  Good  Master,  what  shall  I  do 
that  I  may  inherit  eternal  life.'  "  It  is  not  so 
much  the  question,  as  the  wish  which  evidently 
prompted  the  question,  that  strikes  me.  This 
man  evidently  wished  for  eternal  life,  or  he  would 
not  have  asked  Christ  so  eagerly  how  to  attain 
it.  He  "  came  running  "  and  Kneeled  down  " 
to  him  —  those  staid,  solemn  Jews  did  not  run 
unless  they  were  in  dead  earnest!  So  that  it  is 
a  good  illustration  of  the  wish  for  immortality. 
And  I  want  to  consider  how  far  that  wish  is 
general,  and  of  how  far  it  has  to  do  with  man's 
belief  that  immortality  is  to  be.  The  subject 
came  to  me  the  other  day,  as  I  read  in  a  pop- 
ular periodical  this  statement  that  "  men  have 
ceased  to  wish  for  immortality."  This  was  put 
broadly  and  confidently,  as  if  there  could  not  be 
any  doubt  about  it.     **  Men  have  ceased  to  wish 

263 


264  IMMORTALITY 

for  immortality  "  —  and  it  was  put  so,  evidently 
with  the  idea  that  that  practically  settled  the 
matter;  that,  if  men  are  really  ceasing  even  to 
wish  for  it,  there  is  really  no  ground  for  believ- 
ing it. 

Now  I  have  thought  over  this  a  good  deal, 
and  the  more  I  have  thought  the  more  I  have  been 
impressed  with  these  two  things. 

1st,  that  it  is  a  mistake  to  think  that  people 
do  not  wish  to  live  again  —  I  believe  that  there 
is  just  about  as  much  wish  that  way,  as  ever  there 
was ;  —  but  that,  2nd,  man's  wishing  or  not  wish- 
ing, has  nothing  to  do  with  the  matter  —  that 
immortality  is  one  of  those  great  solemn  facts 
of  being  which  has  to  be  faced,  which  is  going 
to  be,  whether  we  wish  for  it  or  not.  Let  us 
look,  for  a  moment  at  these  two  points.  —  ist 
as  to  how  it  really  is  about  men  wishing  to  live 
again,  or,  rather,  for  that  is  the  deeper  truth, 
to  go  on  living.  I  imagine  that  in  this  matter, 
mankind  are  about  where  they  always  have  been ; 
that  the  wish  never  was  at  all  universal,  but  cer- 
tainly is  not  really  growing  less.  Yet  I  can 
understand  how  some  people  should  think  it  is 
lessening.  Because  there  is  a  marked  change 
in  the  way  the  whole  subject  is  spoken  of.  I 
should  be  inclined  to  put  it  this  way;  that  those 
who  do  not  wish  for  immortality  are  a  great 


IMMORTALITY  265 

deal  more  free  in  saying  so  than  they  used  to  be 
and  that  those  who  still  do  wish  for  it,  are  not 
anxious  about  it,  do  not  profess  to  be  so  sure, 
are  more  content  to  leave  the  whole  subject  to 
the  quiet  unfolding  of  whatever  God's  will  for 
us  may  be.  This  latter  change  of  feeling  is  very 
marked  in  our  time.  Men  are  less  inclined  to 
dogmatize  about  what  is  to  be.  Formerly,  you 
know,  all  was  laid  down  very  certainly;  to  ad- 
mit a  doubt  about  immortality  was  shocking; 
I  can  remember  the  time  when  a  man  who  should 
say  —  he  hoped  for  immortality  but  could  not 
feel  sure  of  it,  would  have  been  regarded  as  al- 
most an  infidel.  Well,  it  is  not  so  now.  People 
have  come  to  see  that  there  can  be  no  absolute, 
black  and  white  proof,  of  any  of  these  deep 
spiritual  realities  —  and  they  are  more  content 
to  leave  it  so.  Thus  you  find  many,  even  deeply 
religious  people,  saying  frankly  that  they  are  con- 
tent without  proof,  content  to  leave  it  with  God 
—  simply  sure  that  it  will  be  all  right.  Often 
such  people  speak  of  immortality  as  a  hope, 
rather  than  as  an  accepted,  or  settled  belief. 
Well,  that  is  a  reverent  spirit  —  and  hope  is 
certainly  a  wish,  even  if  it  is  not  so  eager  in  its 
wishing,  as  the  older  way  of  speaking  seemed 
to  be. 

And  then  while  those  who  do  hope  for  im- 


266  IMMORTALITY 

mortality  are  thus  a  little  less  confident  in 
affirming  it,  those  who  do  not  hope  or  wish  for 
it  are  much  more  open  and  confident  in  their 
scepticism  than  they  used  to  be.  All  doubt  and 
disbelief  express  themselves  to-day  with  a  free- 
dom which  is  a  comparatively  new  thing.  There 
is  more  talking,  and  writing  and  printing,  alto- 
gether than  there  used  to  be,  and  specially  all 
this  is  increased  at  the  smaller  end.  The  great 
thinkers  do  not  talk  or  write  more  than  they 
did  500  years  ago,  but  the  small  thinkers  talk 
and  write  a  vast  deal  more.  And  so  all  the 
scepticism  of  our  time,  all  the  doubt,  all  the 
flippant  indifference  comes  right  out.  I  am  not 
saying  it  should  not  do.  Perhaps  it  is  better  out 
than  in  —  but  it  does  come  out ;  and  so  the  casual 
observer  is  apt  to  feel,  as  if  that  side  of  thought 
had  immensely  increased;  and  people  like  the 
writer  I  quoted  at  first,  say  confidently,  that 
"  Men  are  ceasing  to  wish  for  immortality,"  when 
really  it  is  simply  that  those  who  do  not  wish 
for  it  are  more  open  and  confident  in  saying  so. 
The  larger  point  is,  however,  that  too  much 
has  always  been  made  of  this  supposed  general 
wish.  It  has  been  constantly  treated  in  argu- 
ments on  the  subject,  as  if  of  course  every  one 
longs  to  live  again.  Now  I  do  not  think  that  this 
has  ever  been  true.    There  have  always  been  peo- 


IMMORTALITY  26^ 

pie  to  whom  it  would  have  been  a  relief  not  to 
have  to  live  again.  I  believe  this  about  others 
because  I  have  often  felt  it  so  myself.  I  think 
there  come  times  in  every  one's  experience  — 
times  of  depression,  times  of  perplexity,  times 
when  life  has  got  into  some  great  moral  tangle 
when  it  would  seem  the  happiest  thing,  simply 
to  lie  down  and  have  done  with  it  all. 

No ;  I  am  inclined  to  believe  that  in  the  matter 
of  wishing  for  immortality,  mankind  are  about 
where  they  have  always  been;  and  that  any  ap- 
parent lessening  or  weakening  of  that  wish  arises 
partly  from  men  having  learned  more  trust, 
frankly  leaving  the  whole  matter  to  develope 
itself  as  God  may  will;  and,  partly,  from  any 
doubt  or  wish  not  to  live  again,  uttering  itself 
much  more  freely  and  openly  than  of  old. 

But  what  comes  upon  me  with  most  force  is, 
that  man's  belief  in  immortality  did  not  spring 
from  any  wish  for  it,  has  never  depended  upon 
men's  wishing  for  it,  does  not  depend  upon  it 
now.  I  do  not  suppose  we  can  really  trace  the 
beginning  of  this  belief  among  mankind.  But 
when  our  scientific  investigators  search  back  as 
far  as  they  can,  it  is  not  to  a  wish  for  another 
life  but  rather  to  a  dread  of  it,  that  they  seem 
to  come.     Herbert  Spencer  thinks  that  the  idea 


268  IMMORTALITY 

of  immortality  originated  among  prehistoric 
men  in  the  fear  that  great  savage  chiefs  might 
not  be  finally  dead  after  all  —  might  still  come 
back  to  punish  their  enemies  and  to  plague  the 
living.     They  did  not  want  them  to  live  again 

—  they  tried  to  keep  them  dead  and  still  —  but 
they  were  afraid  they  could  not.  No  wish  for 
it  —  but  a  feeling  — first  about  their  chiefs,  and 
finally  spreading  to  common  men  —  that  it  had  to 
be !  And  so,  again,  there  have  been  times  — 
yes,  many  times  —  in  the  history  of  religions, 
when  the  belief  in  immortality  has  been  so  twisted 
and  distorted,  as  to  become  not  a  joy,  but  a  ter- 
ror—  times  when  it  has  hung  over  men  like  a 
cloud  —  times  when  they  not  only  did  not  wish 
for  it  but  would  have  been  thankful  to  believe 
it  was  all  a  dream  —  but,  in  reality  the  wishing 
or  not  wishing  had  nothing  to  do  with  it  —  they 
had  to  believe  it,  could  not  get  away  from  it! 
Look  at  India.     In  that  hot,  oppressive  climate 

—  life  is  about  as  much  as  men  can  bear  — 
the  ideal  of  happy  life  is,  to  sit  simply  doing 
nothing.  And  there,  in  India,  had  grown  up 
through  measureless  ages  the  belief  in  the  trans- 
migration of  souls  —  that  the  soul  would  keep 
on  passing  endlessly  from  one  form  of  being 
to  another  —  no  stopping  —  new  life,  new  work, 
new  weariness  for  ever.     Talk  of  that  having 


IMMORTALITY  269 

grown  out  of  man's  zvish  —  why  it  was  the  very 
opposite  of  man's  wish,  it  was  a  horror !  And  so 
when  at  last  a  great  prophet  rose  up  among 
them  —  Buddha  —  the  essence  of  his  wisdom 
was  that  he  beheved  he  had  found  out  the  way 
of  escape  from  this  endless  chain  of  being!  The 
way  of  escape  from  Life  —  that  was  the  Gospel 
of  Buddha!  And  men  eagerly  embraced  it. 
Whole  nations  embraced  it.  That  was  their  wish 
—  not  being,  but  absence  of  being.  Nobody  is 
quite  sure  what  "  Nirvana  "  exactly  means,  but 
if  it  does  not  mean  actual  nothingness,  it  means 
something  as  near  to  it  as  possible.  But  here 
is  the  striking  thing:  men  could  not  get  away 
from  their  belief  in  immortality  —  not  even 
through  Buddha!  It  seemed  as  if  they  had  es- 
caped from  it,  but  they  had  not,  gradually  the 
belief  returned  in  all  its  force,  and  if  you  look 
into  the  Buddhist  scriptures  and  pictures,  along 
the  subsequent  centuries  —  they  are  full  of 
representations  of  life  to  come  —  pictures  of 
Heavens  and  Hells  just  as  graphic  and  lurid 
as  anything  that  you  can  find  in  Catholicism. 
No!  they  did  not  wish  for  Immortality,  they 
wanted  to  get  away  from  it,  but  they  could  not. 
And  it  has  been  a  good  deal  the  same  in  some 
forms  of  Christianity.  Christianity,  when  it  has 
got  perverted,  has  sometimes  made  the  thought 


270  IMMORTALITY 

of  Immortality  not  a  joy,  but  a  terror;  not  some- 
thing to  be  wished  for,  but  something  to  be 
dreaded.  Why,  only  think  what  Calvinism  be- 
came !  —  Remember  how  the  old  Calvinist  di- 
vines —  two  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago  — 
used  to  reason  it  out  that  not  one  soul  in  five 
hundred  thousand  could  be  saved  —  the  rest,  all 
damned  —  and  they  believed  it,  too.  Why,  it 
would  have  been  a  mercy  to  regard  the  whole 
thing  as  ended  at  death.  But  no!  There  must 
have    been    very    little    wishing    for    it,    then 

—  but  they  felt  it  was  to  be,  whether  they  wished 
for  it  or  not. 

And  that  is  the  great  lesson  for  ever. 
Whether  we  think,  or  whether  we  live,  so  as  to 
make  the  thought  of  living  on  in  another  world 
a  joy,  or  something  to  dread  and  shrink  from, 
there  it  is  —  just  as  certain  as  to-morrow.  There 
it  is,  I  say.  Apart  from  all  questions  as  to  how 
it  came  to  be,  or  whether  men  desire  it  or  not 

—  here  is  this  sense  in  man,  always  growing  up 
in  his  very  nature,  and  when  temporarily  swept 
away,  still  growing  up  again  —  one  of  those 
great  facts  of  man's  being  which  are  their  own 
sufficient  evidence.  One  or  another  may  not 
feel  it ;  one  or  another  may  doubt  it  or  disbelieve 
it.  You  may  not  be  able  to  establish  the  sense 
of  it  in  the  individual,  but  in  the  large  view 


IMMORTALITY  2/1 

—  of  the  race  —  it  is  unmistakable.  That  is 
where  the  real  argument  from  the  general  thought 
and  feeling  of  man  comes  in.  Not  from  some 
general  wish  for  it,  but  from  the  practically 
universal  sense  of  it.  That  is  really  what  es- 
tablishes all  the  great  thoughts  and  convictions 
of  the  world !  Take  that  great  sense  of  the  dif- 
ference between  right  and  wrong.  That  does 
not  rest  upon  your  sense  or  mine.  You  or  I 
may  sometimes  w^ish  that  wrong  was  not  wrong; 
we  would  like  to  be  free  to  do  it  —  but  that 
great  sense  of  right  and  wrong  grows  up  in  the 
very  life  of  the  race,  and  the  individual  is  car- 
ried on,  in  the  race.  Where  the  value  of  the 
individual  thought  comes  in,  is,  in  this :  that, 
in  the  individual  life  which  is  wholesome,  and 
doing  its  part  well,  the  great  thought  comes 
out  clearly ;  the  more  a  man  obeys  conscience,  the 
more  he  finds  the  sacredness  and  imperativeness 
of  conscience.  —  And  so  it  is  with  regard  to  im- 
mortality. Grant  that  many  do  not  wish  for  it, 
and  do  not  mind  saying  so.  Grant  that  many 
more,  are  less  anxious  about  it,  feel  difficulties 
and  doubts  about  it,  and  are  willing  to  leave  it  to 
whatever  may  prove  to  be  the  divine  will  —  all 
this  does  not  touch  the  great  fact,  that  as  the 
world's  life  keeps  growing  up,  it  still  grows 
up  into  this  faith;  and  that  as  life  grows  nobler 


2']2  IMMORTALITY 

and  higher  and  fuller,  it  feels,  not  less  but  more, 
that  it  is  only  at  the  beginning  of  things,  and  only 
at  the  beginning  of  itself.  Said  Whittier  to  a 
friend :  "I  cannot  feel  that  there  is  any  end 
to  me."  That  is  the  natural  feeling  in  all  life 
that  has  grown  and  lived  sweetly  and  naturally 
on,  and  come  to  the  world's  best.  No!  it  is  the 
poor  unearnest,  selfish  life  that  does  not  care 
whether  it  lives  again;  it  is  the  vapid,  frivolous 
life  that  hardly  cares  whether  it  lives,  and  asks 
**  whether  life  is  worth  living."  Live  the  nobler 
life,  live  for  others,  live  for  truth,  live  for  good, 
and  you  will  never  have  any  doubt  that  this 
life  is  worth  living  and  not  much  doubt  about  liv- 
ing on.  In  a  word,  live  the  immortal  life,  live 
now  as  an  immortal  being,  and  you  will  know 
the  truth  of  immortality.  No!  It  is  only  the 
poorer  kind  of  life  that  has  no  wish  or  care  to  live 
again.  It  grows  tired  even  of  this  life.  Of 
that  kind  of  life  it  may  seem  true  that  it  is  ceas- 
ing to  wish  for  it,  only  it  never  did  wish  for  it. 
But  the  deeper  and  better  life  of  the  world 
moves  steadily  on,  as  ever,  towards  more  and 
fuller  being,  towards  further-reaching  ends,  and 
principles  that  want  much  more  than  this  life 
to  come  to  anything;  and  as  this  sense  of  more 
and  fuller  being  grows,  it  widens  out  into  powers 
and  possibilities  quite  beyond  the  limits  of  the 


IMMORTALITY  273 

earthly  life.     Yes,  apart  from  any  question  of 
wishing,  man  feels  it  must  be  so; 

"  Thou  wilt  not  leave  us  in  the  dust : 
Thou  madest  man, — he  knows  not  why, 
He  thinks  he  was  not  made  to  die 
And  thou  hast  made  him :  Thou  art  just." 

—  Ah  yes.  Lord,  thou  art  just!  Thou  wilt 
not  mock  this  reaching  on  towards  ever  higher 
things,  which  Thou  hast  planted  in  the  very 
nature  of  thy  children! 

That  is  the  element  of  truth  in  that  old  idea 
of  some  universal  wish  for  immortality.  There 
never  was  any  such  universal  wish;  the  wish  for 
life  to  he,  depends  partly  on  what  life  is,  or  at 
least  is  striving  to  be  and  often  a  mean  poor  life 
finds  even  this  earthly  span  too  long,  and  would 
be  glad  to  be  sure  there  is  no  more  to  come. 
But  use  the  present  life  for  the  best  that  is 
in  it ;  yes,  let  there  be  any  element  even  of  striving 
for  the  best  notwithstanding  its  failures  and  its 
poor  low  living,  and  even  that  very  element  of 
wishing  for  something  better  will  develope  that 
deep  underlying  sense  of  this  life  being  a  mere 
beginning,  a  fragment  with  something  more  to 
come !  Yes,  even  the  merest  fragmentary  striv- 
ing for  the  best,  does  so  much ;  but  let  that  striv- 
ing be  the  steady  purpose  of  the  life,  and  at 


274  IMMORTALITY 

once  its  aim,  its  strife  —  yes  its  wish  —  do  at- 
tain proportions  entirely  beyond  the  scale  of  earth. 
But  such  aims,  such  strife  for  fuller  complete- 
ness —  though  indeed  we  wish  for  them  —  are 
not  mere  wishes.  They  are  part  of  the  greater 
order  of  the  world,  which  guarantees  itself 
through  the  measureless  past  that  felt  no  meaning 
in  it,  and  surely  is  not  now  to  stop  just  as  we 
begin  to  see  and  share  its  meaning. 

As  Tennyson  has  said  —  who  is  the  very  poet 
of  the  larger  hope :  — 

'"  Death's  true  name — 
"  Is  onward ;  no  discordance  in  the  roll 
"  And  march  of  that  eternal  harmony 
"  Whereto  the  worlds  beat  time." 

We  know  not  how  it  is  to  be,  or  where.  But 
somehow,  somewhere,  whether  we  wish  for  it  or 
not,  we  know,  by  the  dumb  craving  of  the  or- 
dered world,  as  well  as  by  the  uttered  hope  of 
holiest  souls  that  God  will  yet  fulfill  us  into 
something  better  than  the  fragments  that  we  are. 
And  so  we  wait,  and  work  and  watch  and  do  the 
best  we  may,  or  bow  our  heads  in  sorrow  that 
our  doing  is  so  much  below  our  best  —  and 
as  His  laws  ordain  we  let  life  go,  or  fall  asleep, 
but  always  for  some  further  greater  life  beyond 
the  shadows  and  the  sleeping. 


THE  NEARNESS  AND  REALITY  OF  THE 
HEAVENLY  WORLD 

The  "  Heavenly  World."  We  want  to  have 
a  happier  and  more  realistic  thought  about  it. 
Why  is  it,  that  while  the  belief  in  living  again 
is  so  universal  and  deep-rooted  that  it  seems 
impossible  for  our  race  ever  to  get  away  from 
it,  yet  the  actual  thought  of  that  life  to  come, 
is,  to  most  people  utterly  vague,  shadowy  and 
unsubstantial?  I  do  not  think  that  Life  to 
come  is  what  it  might  be  to  us.  Yet,  in  the 
present  day,  especially,  when  all  the  difficulties 
about  Immortality  have  been  faced  and  investi- 
gated as  never  before,  and  found  to  have  noth- 
ing really  in  them,  it  seems  such  a  pity  for  us 
not  to  have  all  the  help,  and  inspiration,  and 
rest  which  this  great  thought,  legitimately  viewed, 
has  in  it. 

I  speak  of  this  great  thought  "  legitimately 
viewed."  For  when  I  come  to  consider  why  it 
is,  that  with  such  general  belief  that  it  must 
be,  there  is  so  little  happy,  realizing  faith  in  it, 
I  am  convinced  that  it  very  largely  arises  from 

275 


2^6      .  THE   HEAVENLY   WORLD 

not  viewing  it  legitimately,  from  thinking  about 
it  on  a  wrong  line,  from  trying  to  form  our 
conceptions  of  it  in  precisely  the  wrong  way. 

See;  the  trouble  is,  in  this  idea  that  possesses 
the  common  mind  that  the  Heavenly  World  is 
something  much  less  real  and  actual  than  this 
world.     But  how  comes  this  idea?     Chiefly,  I 
believe,    from   this   wrong  way  of  thinking :  — 
from  trying  to  attain  a  conception  of  the  higher 
spiritual  life  and  spiritual  world  by  contrast  with 
this,  and  negation  of  this.     People  draw  a  broad 
contrast  between  body  and  soul,  between  material 
and    spiritual.      They    strip    away    from    their 
thought   everything  associated   with  bodily   ex- 
istence, and  take  it  for  granted  that  the  remainder 
will   be   the   spiritual.       Everything   material   is 
exhausted  out  of  their  conceptions,  or  only  used 
to  indicate  what  the  spiritual  is  not.    Well,  what 
comes    of    that?    simply    a    list    of    negations. 
Spiritual  things  and  the  spiritual  world  are  not 
this,  and  that  and  the  other.    They  are  not  solid, 
they  are  not  liquid,  they  are  not  even  seriform; 
they  have  not  shape,  or  color,  or  weight,  or  any- 
thing else  that  material  substances  have,  and  so 
the  whole  idea  of  the  spiritual  world  is  grad- 
ually reduced  to  something  shadowy  and  spec- 
tral, something  as  near  nothingness  as  possible. 
Is  it  surprising  that  with  such  an  idea  —  or  rather 


THE    HEAVENLY   WORLD  277 

such  a  lack  of  any  idea  —  people  find  it  rather  a 
dismal  prospect  ?  Is  it  surprising  that  they  really 
feel  —  though  they  may  be  afraid  to  say  so, 
lest  it  should  sound  irreligious  —  that  they  very 
much  prefer  the  present?  I  do  not  wonder  at 
it.  For  with  all  its  drawbacks  the  present  is  a 
glorious  world!  There  is  a  genial  warmth  in 
its  sunshine,  a  wholesome  bracing  in  its  very  cold. 
Its  fields  shine  with  a  pleasant  green;  its  good 
things  are  most  unmistakable  realities,  and  the 
grasp  of  a  friend's  hand  is  a  substantial  joy,  com- 
pared to  which  there  is  something  very  vague  and 
unsatisfying  in  a  life  in  which  people  are  almost 
afraid  to  count  upon  even  knowing  each  other. 
But  now,  I  ask  w^hy  should  this  idea  of  the 
shadowy,  spectral  unreality  of  the  Heavenly 
World  exist?  The  whole  process  by  which  men 
come  to  it  is  a  wrong  one.  This  plan,  of  ex- 
hausting out  all  that  seems  most  real  from  our 
present  existence,  in  order  to  conceive  the  spir- 
itual, is  a  mere  throwing  away  of  the  very  helps 
to  thought  which  Nature  gives.  The  truth  is, 
and  all  science  and  all  philosophy  are  now  tend- 
ing to  this,  that  we  ought  just  to  reverse  this 
course.  Whatever  that  may  really  be  which  we 
call  the  spiritual,  the  way  to  some  living  ap- 
prehension of  it,  is,  by  looking  at  material 
things  not  as  its  opposites  and  contrasts,  but  as 


2y^  THE   HEAVENLY   WORLD 

its  likenesses  and  types,  and  perhaps  even  its 
beginnings  only  in  a  lower  realm.  From  height 
to  height  climb  the  realities  in  this  vast  universe 
of  being;  and  from  those  we  see,  to  those  we 
cannot  see,  must  be  still  the  same  orderly  path. 
And  even  science  is  helping  us  in  this.  For  it 
is  not  only  shewing  us  this  steady  upward  trend 
and  drift  of  things;  but  it  is  shewing  us  how, 
even  in  the  mere  material  universe,  the  most 
tremendous  factors  are  not  the  visible  sub- 
stances, but  elements  and  forces  only  perceptible 
at  all  by  their  effects,  and  as  impalpable  to  any 
outward  sense  as  Soul  and  God.  So  Science, 
and  the  Philosophy  which  grows  out  of  it,  are 
really  helping  us  to  the  conclusion  that  what- 
ever matter  and  spirit  really  are,  it  is  spirit  and 
the  spiritual  element  in  Being  which  are  the 
most  real,  and  the  most  enduring  realities  of  all. 
So  the  legitimate  way  of  thinking  about  the 
spiritual  world,  is  not  by  stripping  away  from 
our  thought  of  that  world  the  elements  which 
give  the  impression  of  reality,  but  by  using 
them  —  as  hints  and  suggestions  —  and  think- 
ing along  the  line  of  them,  only  beyond  them 
to  something  more  intensely  real  and  glorious. 

I  am  confirmed  in  this  way  of  thinking 
towards  Heavenly  things,  by  finding  that  this 
is  just  the  way  in  which  those  have  thought. 


THE   HEAVENLY    WORLD  279 

and  shaped  out  their  thoughts  who  have  most 
lived  in  the  Spiritual  life,  and  whose  thinking 
and  seeing  have  reached  furthest  into  those 
higher  realms  of  being.  I  do  not  take  these 
words  of  Christ  and  Paul  as  cut  and  dry  reve- 
lations. They  are  not  substitutes  for  our  think- 
ing, but  helps  to  it,  helps  to  show  us  the  direction 
in  which  to  think,  and  to  make  us  sure  that,  in 
that  direction,  lie  the  great  realities  of  God  and 
Heaven.  And  see  —  every  one  of  these  great 
Words  of  theirs  is  alive  w^ith  these  two  thoughts 
for  which  I  am  pleading  —  of  the  nearness 
and  reality  of  the  Heavenly  World,  with 
earthly  things  used  as  helps  towards  apprehend- 
ing it! 

Look  first  at  that  idea  of  nearness.  Almost 
every  allusion  to  Immortal  life  in  the  New  Tes- 
tament shows  how  near  they  felt  it  a  Heavenly 
World  only  separated  from  this  by  what  Sears 
calls  "  a  thin  partition  of  unconsciousness."  In 
that  clear  thought  of  Christ,  the  immortal  life 
is  already  begun.  "  This  is  life-eternal  "  he 
says  —  speaking  of  the  higher  life  of  men  now; 
—  and,  "  not  dead  but  sleeping "  is  the  con- 
tinual word  in  which  he  utterly  refused  to  treat 
what  men  call  dying  as  such  an  utter,  hopeless 
end  of  earthly  love.  All  this  was  more  striking 
then,    than    it    seems    now,    because    the    Jews 


280  THE   HEAVENLY   WORLD 

thought  only  of  some  infinitely  distant  resur- 
rection day,  and  that,  until  then,  the  dead  re- 
mained unconscious  or  mere  ghosts  in  the  dim, 
gloomy  underworld.  How  different  Christ's 
feeling  about  the  Heavenly  World!  You  see  in 
his  whole  life  and  spirit  the  tokens  of  a  sense 
of  that  Heavenly  World  as  close  about  him ;  now 
and  again  its  presence  is  felt  so  vividly  that  it  is 
as  if  its  very  glory  shone  out  into  the  lower 
visible  Vv^orld,  —  as  at  his  Baptism  and  in  the 
Transfiguration.  So,  in  his  language  when  he 
is  about  to  leave  them.  It  is  the  language  of 
one  going  away  but  not  far  —  *'  to  prepare  a 
place  for  you  "  he  says  —  where  they  would  soon 
be  with  him  again.  I  can  think  of  no  better 
word  to  express  it,  than  that  I  have  already 
quoted  —  of  a  world  separated  from  this  not  by 
some  great  interval  of  time  or  space,  but  by  ''  a 
thin  partition  of  unconsciousness."  Uncon- 
sciousness on  this  side  only ;  "  A  little  while  and 
ye  shall  not  see  me  " ;  but,  he  says,  "  I  am  with 
you  even  to  the  end  of  the  world  " ;  and  again 
"  There  is  joy  in  the  presence  of  the  angels  of 
God  over  one  sinner  that  repenteth."  This  was 
Christ's  habitual  thought,  and  this  was  the 
thought  of  the  Heavenly  life  which  the  Apostles 
learned  of  him.  They  believed  that  this  was 
specially  brought  home  to  them  by  his   Reap- 


THE    HEAVENLY    WORLD  281 

pearances,  —  that  in  some  strange  way,  when 
they,  after  the  thought  of  their  time,  supposed 
him  dead  until  some  far  off  resurrection-day,  he 
appeared  to  them,  shewed  them  that  he  was  al- 
ready risen,  and  made  that  Heavenly  World  in 
which  he  was,  a  different  thing  to  them  from 
what  they  had  ever  dreamed  of  before !  Before, 
they  had  believed  in  a  dim  far-off  Future  state 

—  now  they  felt  it  as  a  glorious  Heavenly  World, 
where  Christ  w^as  and  the  saints.  This  is  the 
meaning  of  that  glad  watchword  of  the  early 
church  — ''  Christ  is  Risen,"  it  was  not  the  re- 
iteration of  his  having  reappeared  to  them,  it 
was  the  ever  renewed  affirmation  of  that  present 
Heaven  which  his  reappearing  from  it  had  made 
so  intensely  near  to  them.  There  he  was  alive 
for  ever  more,  still  their  master,  loving,  patient, 

—  watching  them  in  their  service,  making  inter- 
cession for  them  in  their  weakness,  waiting  to 
welcome  them  to  his  own  place.  Stephen  dying, 
sees  Heaven  opened,  as  earth's  light  grows  dim, 
and  cries  *'  Lord  Jesus,  receive  my  soul !  "  The 
living  and  the  departed  are,  in  their  thought, 
only  ''  one  family  in  earth  and  Heaven."  And 
so,  all  through,  you  feel  how  present  and  close 
at  hand  they  felt  the  Heavenly  World  to  be,  — 
scarcely  divided  from  this  world,  and  lying 
close  beyond  the  shadowy  gates  of  death,  through 


282  THE   HEAVENLY   WORLD 

which  its  dawning  splendours  often  broke  upon 
the  just  departing  soul. 

And,  again,  —  they  thought  of  the  Heavenly 
world  not  only  as  close  at  hand,  but,  as  intensely 
real.  I  spoke  just  now,  of  how,  in  trying  to 
come  at  some  idea  of  man's  immortal  state,  we 
are  apt  to  begin  by  stripping  away  from  our 
thought  of  it,  everything  visible  and  tangible  — 
everything  that  specially  impresses  the  feeling  of 
reality,  in  the  present  existence.  Now  it  is 
noticeable  that  they  took  exactly  the  opposite 
way.  I  do  not  mean  that  they  carefully  reasoned 
it  out  just  so ;  —  simply,  that  in  their  endeavour 
to  shadow  forth  those  spiritual  realities  which 
had  become  so  much  to  them,  they  gladly  used 
the  realities  of  the  present.  That  is  the  mean- 
ing of  Paul's  reiteration,  in  many  forms,  of  the 
idea  of  a  ^'  bodily  resurrection."  He  does  not 
mean  that  these  earthly  bodies  were  to  be  raised 
up  again  —  that  is  the  clumsy  misunderstand- 
ing of  his  words  in  later  and  grosser  times.  He 
himself  distinctly  repudiates  the  idea  of  any  such 
revivifying  of  these  bodies.  "  Flesh  and  blood  " 
he  says  *'  cannot  inherit  the  Kingdom  of 
Heaven."  ''  Corruption  does  not  inherit  incor- 
ruption  " ;  —  mere  physical  substance  has  no 
place  in  that  realm  of  spiritual  existence  to  which 
soul  belongs.     Yet,  "  It  is  sown  a  natural  body. 


THE   HEAVENLY   WORLD  283 

it  is  raised  a  spiritual  body."  What  that 
*'  spiritual  body  "  is  to  be,  and  what  the  nature 
of  that  glorified  world  in  which  it  is  to  be,  he 
says  nothing;  there  was  nothing  to  say  —  ''it 
hath  not  entered  into  the  heart  of  man  to  con- 
ceive the  things  which  God  hath  prepared  for 
them  that  love  him."  Only  —  it  is  all  real, 
he  says  —  not  merely  spectral,  as  people  thought 
before,  and  many  fancy  now,  —  not  shadowy 
phantoms  in  a  phantom  state.  He  is  laboring, 
all  the  time,  to  bring  out  the  thought  of  how  that 
is  the  real  world,  and  its  things  the  absolute 
realities,  while  this,  though  real,  too,  after  a 
poorer,  temporary  fashion,  is,  by  comparison  at 
least,  changeable,  fleeting  and  evanescent! 

It  is  this  thought,  the  sense  of  how  this  v/as 
the  way  in  which  they  used  the  sense  of  earthly 
reality  to  help  the  perception  of  the  reality  in 
Heavenly  things,  —  which  gives  us  some  open- 
ing into  the  real  meaning  of  that  curious  book 
of  the  Revelation.  You  have,  in  that  book,  the 
visions  of  one  of  the  devoutest  minds  of  that 
first  age  —  caught  up  in  his  communion  with  the 
Divine  spirit  into  the  intenser  sense  of  Heavenly 
realities,  seeing,  as  in  mighty  sweeps  of  light  and 
glory,  the  collapse  of  the  giant  powers  and 
wrongs  of  earth,  and  the  triumph  of  God's  Will, 
and  the  rejoicings  of  the  Saints,  and  the  final 


284  THE    HEAVENLY    WORLD 

merging  of  all  poor  earthly  things  into  the 
glories  of  the  new  Heavens  and  earth!  Some 
people  are  repelled  by  its  strong  material 
imagery;  they  smile  at  those  quaint  reiterations 
of  gold  and  gems  and  precious  stones,  —  em- 
eralds and  pearls  and  sapphires ;  —  but  as  I 
read  them,  the  impression  they  produce  is  this: 
of  a  mind  filled  with  great  thoughts  and  glori- 
ous images,  groping  round  and  round  among 
the  brightest  and  most  glittering  earthly 
splendours,  in  the  effort  to  find  any  words  and 
images  by  which  he  might  convey  to  others  some 
imagining  of  the  unspeakable  things  of  God. 
Will  you  "pooh,  pooh,"  it  all,  as  exaggeration? 
It  is  just  the  other  way!  short  of  the  truth,  not 
beyond  it,  —  poor,  imperfect,  like  the  tawdry 
pictures  of  some  grand  scripture-story  that  one 
used  to  see  upon  cottage-walls,  —  yes,  and  yet, 
like  such  rude  pictures,  giving  to  our  poor 
earthly  minds  craving  for  something  real,  some 
dim  yet  glittering  image  of  the  glorious  world 
to  come. 

You  see  I  have  not  attempted  to  claim  for 
scripture  any  formal  authority,  nor  to  use  it  in 
any  close  literalism,  as  giving  any  exact  descrip- 
tions of  heavenly  things.  But  I  do  feel  it  a 
mighty  help  in  making  us  sure  that  the  unseen 
things  are  real,  and  in  encouraging  us  to  think 


THE   HEAVENLY   WORLD  285 

towards  them  with  more  reaUstic  thought.  Even 
Nature,  at  its  lowest  makes  it  impossible  to  be- 
lieve that  death  ends  all,  but  that  is  about  as  far 
as  Nature  goes.  It  does  not  give  any  glad  happy 
sense  of  real  life  to  come.  For  that  we  have 
to  go  to  these  great  Masters  of  the  spiritual  life 
—  they  may  be  only  a  part  of  Nature,  still,  but 
Nature,  then,  at  its  highest.  And  as  we  go  to 
them  —  to  this  great  Christ,  and  those  who 
came  nearest  to  his  thought,  and  put  our  hands 
in  theirs  to  walk  with  them,  they  at  least  make 
us  feel  that  the  Heavenly  things  are  real,  not 
phantoms,  or  shadows.  They  do  not  give  us 
finished  pictures  of  the  Heavenly  world.  That 
is  what  we  are  not  to  have  here.  But  what  we 
want  to  have,  and  what  we  may  have,  is,  a  glad 
assurance  that  —  though  we  cannot  think  it  all 
out,  it  is  not  less  real  than  we  can  think,  but 
more! 

And  therefore,  too,  I  love  the  Easter-time, 
which  brings  to  us  again  its  great  words  and 
tones  of  realizing  faith,  born  of  that  older  time. 
It  is  good  for  us  to  sing  those  old  songs  —  of 
the  Heavenly  World,  and  of  Christ  being  risen 
there,  and  of  the  Angel-hallelujahs,  and  the  light 
that  has  no  fading!  I  know  that  these  are,  all, 
above  the  sober  levels  of  experience.  But  that 
is  the  very  reason  we  want  them  —  to  remind 


286  THE   HEAVENLY   WORLD 

US  that  these  sober  facts  of  earth  are  not  all,  are 
only  the  least  of  all  that  is;  to  help  us  to  feel 
that  the  Heavenly  w^orld  is  near  and  real;  and 
that  the  world  we  see,  real  as  it  is  in  its  own 
lower  order  of  existence,  is  but  like  a  shadow 
or  a  dream  compared  to  the  infinitely  brighter 
and  more  glorious  reality  of  the  world  we  can- 
not see. 

Do  you  ask  —  how  may  all  this  be  ?  How  can 
there  be  another  world,  more  real  than  this,  close 
to  us,  round  about  us  ever,  and  we  unconscious 
of  it?  Thinking  how  this  might  be,  and  how  I 
might  make  it  plain,  an  illustration  recurs  to  me, 
used  by  one  of  those  writers  I  have  referred  to 
—  an  illustration  which  somic  of  you  may  have 
met  before,  but  which  will  well  bear  repeating. 

Suppose  a  little  child  fallen  asleep  amid  sum- 
mer scenery.  In  that  sleep,  the  child  is  shut 
into  a  dream-world  of  his  own.  In  that  dream- 
world he  sees  pleasant  and  beautiful  things;  he 
plays  with  his  dream  companions,  gathers  the 
flowers,  plashes  in  the  stream  —  and  so  happy 
is  he  that  his  cheeks  are  aglow,  and  a  smile  plays 
upon  his  lips.  It  is  all  real  to  him,  —  and  for 
the  time  he  knows  of  no  other  existence.  Yet 
all  the  while  he  is  in  a  world  still  more  bright, 
infinitely  more  real,  and  he  has  not  the  faintest 
consciousness  of  it!     The  fragrance    of    actual 


THE    HEAVENLY   WORLD  28/ 

flowers  is  wafted  over  him,  and  he  does  not  per- 
ceive it;  the  actual  music  of  the  birds  sounds 
sweetly,  but  he  does  not  hear  it.  Now,  mark; 
the  child  is  in  two  worlds  at  once  —  consciously 
in  the  one,  unconsciously  in  the  other.  How 
will  you  transfer  his  conscious  living  from  the 
first,  to  the  last  ?  How  will  you  bring  him  from 
the  dream-land  into  the  real  world?  Not  by 
taking  him  a  journey  through  space,  but  simply 
by  waking  him  up.  What  a  change  is  there 
then !  For  a  moment  a  confused,  half-painful 
sense  of  the  things  amid  which  he  has  been  so 
happy  fading  from  him,  but  then  in  a  moment 
more  the  joyful  perception  of  the  real  world 
into  which  he  has  so  strangely  passed. 

So,  do  I  sometimes  think  it  may  be,  in  the 
passing  from  our  present  earthly  existence  into 
that  greater  life  in  which  this  present  shall  by 
and  by  be  swallowed  up.  I  know  that  no  earthly 
similitudes  can  adequately  figure  forth  these 
deep  and  wonderful  things  —  but  if  they  can 
even  help  us  to  some  stronger  clearer  thought, 
let  us  not  despise  them!  And  after  all,  com- 
pared to  that  greater  life,  this  little  span  of 
earthly  years  is  only  like  a  dream!  Compared 
to  its  imperishable  realities,  these  objects  of 
earth  that  are  silently  changing  every  moment, 
are  but  as  the  shadows  which  fill  our  dreams. 


288  THE   HEAVENLY   WORLD 

Like  the  little  dreaming-child  we  think  there  can 
be  nothing  so  real;  but  the  watching  angels 
must  smile  to  see  the  eager  expressions  of  pas- 
sion, hope,  and  fear,  which  pass  over  our  faces. 
And  in  a  little  while  the  Father-presence  bend- 
ing over  us  will  touch  us  with  that  kind  hand 
which  in  our  blindness  we  call  the  hand  of 
death  —  and  even  while  the  visions  of  this 
earthly  life  fade  from  us  like  our  dreams,  the 
glorious  realities  of  the  Heavenly  world  will 
open  to  our  changed  and  wondering  sight! 


THE   INSPIRATIONS   OF   SCIENCE 

I  WANT  my  closing  word  in  this  volume  to  be 
on  the  confirmation  and  even  inspiration  which 
Science  in  its  later  stages  is  giving  to  all  the 
upward  reaching  thought  of  man,  and  especially 
to  his  religious  faith  and  feeling.  When  I  was 
beginning  my  ministry,  the  talk  was  all  about 
the  difficulties  and  perplexities  of  Science.  And 
indeed  they  were  very  real.  The  material  world 
was  being  explored  in  every  branch  of  it  with 
such  brilliant  realism  that  the  spiritual  world 
seemed  vague  and  doubtful  in  comparison.  The 
difficulties  touched  the  whole  circle  of  faith  — 
the  thought  of  God  —  of  any  soul  in  man  —  of 
immortality ;  even  of  any  divine  authoritativeness 
in  morals  —  so  that  many  people  lost  much  con- 
fidence in  that  side  of  life,  in  all  the  study  and 
exercise  of  religion.  It  seemed  to  lack  reality 
compared  with  the  exact  investigations  of  out- 
ward and  tangible  nature.  I  have  felt  all  that 
myself.  One  does  not  need  to  be  a  scientist  to 
follow     with     intense     appreciation     what     the 

289 


290  THE   INSPIRATIONS   OF   SCIENCE 

scientists  are  doing  and  thinking.  Why,  there 
were  years  in  my  earlier  work  when  hardly  a 
three  months  passed  without  bringing  some  new 
step  of  discovery,  or  some  new  forecast  of 
theory  by  those  who  seemed  to  see  and  think  the 
furthest,  which  made  one  feel  anew  as  if  the 
whole  underpinning  of  religion  and  worship 
was  being  knocked  away.  And  there  could  be 
no  evading  it  —  at  least  for  churches  that  had 
fairly  planted  themselves  on  freedom  and 
thought.  I  once  heard  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes 
say  that  "  alone  among  Christian  Churches, 
Unitarians  had  faced  the  modern  discoveries  of 
science  with  perfectly  open  eyes."  And  of 
course  that  meant  perplexity  and  doubt  for  a 
time. 

But  now  we  are  going  to  have  our  reward! 
For  if  one  does  not  need  to  be  a  scientist  to  feel 
the  difficulties  science  presents,  certainly  one 
does  not  need  to  be  a  scientist  to  appreciate  its 
affirmations  and  even  its  inspirations.  And  it 
has  come  to  me  of  late  that  really  taken  alto- 
gether, its  great  new  discoveries  not  only  do  not 
touch  the  ancient  reverence  of  mankind,  but  in 
their  larger,  broader  sweep  of  meaning  set  it 
upon  a  firmer  base,  and  with  an  infinitely  higher 
reach   of  meaning. 

The  first  of  these  inspirations  of  science  that 


THE   INSPIRATIONS   OF   SCIENCE  29I 

I  will  Speak  of  is  the  reassurance  of  the  Eternal 
Goodness  which  has  come  in  the  fuller  unfolding 
of  Evolution.  At  first  you  know,  Evolution 
seemed  to  bring  insurmountable  difficulty  to  re- 
ligious faith.  As  men  traced  it  working  here 
and  there,  they  seemed  to  find  everything 
silently  doing  itself  by  impassive  law;  no  place 
for  God  and  certainly  no  place  for  divine  good- 
ness. The  law  seemed  not  only  impassive  but 
merciless :  that  ''  struggle  for  existence  "  with 
the  weaker  always  going  to  the  wall,  filling  the 
world  with  strife  and  cruelty:  a  thousand  things 
in  nature  and  in  history  which  no  ingenuity  of 
reasoning  could  show  in  any  light  of  goodness. 
No!  but  gradually  as  the  whole  scope  and  im- 
mensity of  the  great  thought  of  Evolution  has 
appeared,  —  as  daring,  sure-footed  thinkers  have 
traced  it,  back  and  back  through  the  vast  periods 
that  geology  proves,  and  that  astronomy  has  to 
infer,  there  has  risen  up  the  sense  of  an  ordered 
meaning,  present  through  the  whole,  which  awes 
the  mind.  Even  in  the  passing  detail  —  as  of 
some  gracious  beauty  in  a  flower  or  the  curious 
wonder  of  an  insect  spinning  a  cocoon,  one  is 
constantly  touched  by  an  irresistible  impression 
that  something  means  this;  but  when  you  glance 
along  the  whole  vast  cosmic  process  this  sense 
of    a    mighty    meaning    becomes    almost    over- 


292  THE    INSPIRATIONS    OF    SCIENCE 

whelming.  When  the  astronomer  takes  me 
back  to  the  primal  fire-mists  for  the  remotest 
beginnings  of  worlds,  and  shows  me  those  fire- 
mists  circling  into  spheres  and  systems,  and 
some  cooling  into  globes;  and  at  last  a  strange 
new  element  of  life  appearing,  covering  the 
globe  with  verdure,  coming  at  length  to  animal 
life,  at  first  in  lowest  forms,  but  through  the 
measureless  periods  developing  into  higher  forms 
of  infinite  variety  —  from  monad  into  mammal, 
and  up  to  man;  and  all  things  coming  at  last  to 
the  infinitely  varied  wonder  and  beauty  of  the 
world  as  we  see  it  about  us  to-day  —  why ;  sim- 
ply I  may  shut  my  eyes,  just  dazed,  and  refuse 
to  think  about  it  at  all ;  but  if  I  do  think  about 
it,  I  cannot  help  recognizing  in  it  all,  thought, 
meaning  —  orderly  meaning,  and  progressive 
meaning. 

This  is  something  of  an  inspiration,  this  re- 
assurance of  an  eternal  meaning,  that  we  at 
least  are  not  chance  atoms,  drifting  like  floating 
specks  of  foam  upon  a  tideless  ocean  dense  with 
mist  —  but  parts  of  a  vast,  traceable,  onward 
movement  —  a  movement  that  has  already  come 
to  wonderful  things,  and  touches  us  with  an  ir- 
resistible sense  of  further  meaning  still. 

And  not  meaning  only.  I  think  it  comes  to 
us,  in  this  longer  look  which  Evolution  gives, 


THE    INSPIRATIONS   OF    SCIENCE  293 

that  it  is  a  good  meaning,  that  the  power  which 
dominates  the  whole  must  surely  be  good.  We 
may  not  see  it  in  the  passing  event.  You  watch 
things  as  they  are  working  out  to-day,  and  there 
is  much  to  cause  doubt  as  to  whether  the  power 
which  causes,  or  even  permits  it,  can  be  good. 
Books  have  been  written  on  the  cruelty  of 
Nature.  ''  Red  in  tooth  and  claw  "  as  Tenny- 
son writes,  a  ''  scene  of  incessant  strife  "  as  Hux- 
ley called  it.  That  "  struggle  for  existence  "  — 
all  things  preying  on  one  another,  has  an  aw- 
fully merciless  look,  as  if  some  vast  machine 
were  just  tearing  things  to  pieces  —  living 
things  to  pieces  —  all  the  time.  And  when  you 
look  into  the  human  world,  it  does  not  need  Da- 
homey and  its  horrors;  life  on  the  underside  of 
civilization;  East-end  life  in  hard  times;  plague 
or  famine  among  the  close-packed  millions  of 
India  —  how  our  hearts  shudder  for  such  things 
and  long  for  some  tiny  scrap  of  omnipotence, 
to  make  them  less.  And  sometimes  things  cul- 
minate in  such  crises  of  agony  —  such  agony  as 
Alva's  soldiers  wrought  in  Holland  three  hun- 
dred years  ago;  such  agony  as  Armenia  has  suf- 
fered in  our  very  sight ;  such  sharp  points  of  un- 
utterable horror  as  that  crowding,  trampling 
multitude  at  the  Moscow  Coronation  or  that 
fiery  furnace  at  the  Paris  Charity  Fair  —  that 


294  THE    INSPIRATIONS    OF    SCIENCE 

one  feels  like  shrieking  out  against  any  idea  of 
goodness  in  God,  if  God  there  be. 

I  know!  I  have  felt  all  that!  But  still,  what 
is  it  makes  us  horror-struck  at  such  things? 
What  is  this  pity  that  we  feel?  Whence  comes 
it?  This  also  is  part  of  this  long  process  of 
Evolution.  It  seems  a  curious  thing,  does  it 
not,  that  this  slow,  silent,  working  of  things 
together  which  has  brought  the  world  on  even 
by  all  this  struggle  for  existence  has,  as  its  fin- 
est result,  evolved  a  Being  capable  of  looking 
into  the  struggling  process  and  criticising  it,  and 
being  saddened  by  it,  and  trying  to  mitigate  it? 
At  the  first  flash  of  it,  it  seems  as  if  there  might 
be  two  processes  of  Evolution,  one  evolving 
nature  higher  and  higher,  but  with  these  forces 
of  struggle  and  merciless  outcome  of  suffering; 
and  the  other  evolving  man,  up  to  mercy  and 
pity  and  help.  But  no!  The  whole  is  one  vast 
complex  process,  and  surely  then,  it  is  in  this 
highest,  latest  product  —  man  —  that  we  have 
the  real  interpretation  of  the  whole,  that  "  to 
which  the  whole  creation  moves."  Yes;  there 
is  plenty  still  that  we  do  not  understand;  but 
such  a  steady  unfolding,  through  such  incon- 
ceivably vast  time,  of  ordered  meanings  leading 
finally  to  man  —  man  conscious  of  what  good- 
ness   is,    and    loving  it  and  feeling  it  the  very 


THE    INSPIRATIONS   OF   SCIENCE  295 

greatest  thing  of  all  —  that  the  whole  grows 
upon  me  more  and  more,  in  spite  of  much  I  can- 
not understand,  as  a  very  inspiration  of  Faith  in 
the  Eternal  Goodness  —  goodness  the  final 
meaning  of  the  whole. 

There  is  one  of  the  inspirations  of  the  great 
scientific  truth  of  Evolution.  Another  is,  the 
trust  it  gives  us  in  the  higher  indications  of  our 
own  nature.  Here  is  this  moral  life  in  man,  this 
which  comes  out  in  principles  of  righteousness, 
which  makes  laws  and  sets  up  the  world's  insti- 
tutions of  justice  and  struggles  for  the  good. 
Here  is  man's  religious  life  "  feeling  after  God, 
if  haply  it  may  find  Him  "  seeking  for  some 
life  above  man's  self  to  worship  and  to  lean  upon 
in  prayer  and  trust;  and  not  only  feeling  after 
God  but  seeking  after  some  further  life  to  come. 
What  is  all  this?  And  can  man  trust  these 
things,  as  anything  real,  or  are  they  mere  rest- 
less and  morbid  fictions  of  man's  conceit,  tak- 
ing the  echoes  of  his  own  thought  for  intimations 
from  a  higher  realm? 

As  this  questioning  age  has  tried  to  apply  its 
science  to  these  vague,  immaterial  things,  they 
have  seemed  so  vague,  so  intangible,  so  impos- 
sible of  verification  by  any  scientific  process, 
that  there  has  grown  up  a  wide-spread  scepticism 
about  them,  and  all  sorts  of  theories  have  been 


296  THE   INSPIRATIONS   OF   SCIENCE 

shaped  out  as  to  how  they  came  —  not  only  to 
be  —  but  to  prevail  so  widely  among  mankind. 
The  thought  of  God  has  by  some  been  traced 
back  to  the  savage's  ignorant  dread  of  the  powers 
of  nature.  The  thought  of  further  life  to  come 
had  its  beginning,  we  are  told,  in  dreams.  The 
sense  of  right  and  duty  may  have  grown  up  out 
of  the  accumulated  motives  of  self  interest.  And 
so  all  round  the  circle  of  man's  out-reaching  life 
towards  the  Infinite  and  the  Divine,  he  has  been 
beaten  back,  as  it  were,  upon  himself,  and  even 
Evolution  itself  has  been  pressed  into  the  ser- 
vice to  explain  how  such  blundering  aspirations 
may  have  arisen,  and  to  marshall  his  retreat  from 
the  supposed  cloud-land  of  superstitious  fancy 
to  the  solid  ground  of  facts. 

Well,  all  that  explaining  away  has  been  pro- 
foundly unsatisfactory.  Multitudes  have  felt 
their  lives  poorer  for  it,  even  while  they  have  sor- 
rowfully allowed  that  they  could  see  no  other 
way.  Men  and  women  have  longed  to  pray, 
and  felt  the  old  songs  of  worship  tremble  on 
their  lips,  but  have  choked  them  down  because 
they  fancied  science  had  shown  only  empty  vast- 
nesses  of  space,  where  once,  they  thought,  was  a 
listening,  loving  presence.  It  is  all  a  blunder! 
Science  has  done  nothing  of  the  kind,  and  Evo- 
lution, when  you  take  in  the  full  vast  meaning 


THE   INSPIRATIONS   OF   SCIENCE  297 

of  it,  does  the  very  opposite !  For  Evolution  has 
not  only  evolved  plants  and  beasts,  it  has 
evolved  man  —  and  man  not  only  in  the  physi- 
cal frame  in  which  you  can  still  trace  the  con- 
tinuous plan,  but  in  higher  faculties  and  powers 
and  feelings  which  seem  above  all  connection 
with  that  lower  life  of  his  evolved  beginnings. 
As  I  try  to  contemplate  what  the  evolution  of 
Man  means,  my  mind  is  filled  with  awe.  Why, 
even  the  slow  processes  which  have  evolved  the 
beauty  of  a  flower  or  the  prehensile  power  of 
the  elephant's  trunk  —  how  wonderful  it  is  to 
think  of  them.  But  think  of  the  evolution  of 
a  man :  the  development  of  mind :  the  growth  of 
the  first  rude  tribal  sense  of  right  into  the  "  cate- 
gorical imperative  "  of  a  conscience ;  the  evolu- 
tion of  animal  lust  into  pure  human  love;  all  the 
higher  range  of  human  qualities  which  are  the 
most  tremendous  forces  in  history  —  the  passion 
for  righteousness,  the  **  enthusiasm  of  human- 
ity," the  up-look  to  some  higher  life  than  man's, 
the  on-look  to  some  further  existence  than  the 
present.  Even  as  mere  phenomena  of  the  present 
these  things  are  too  great,  too  uniform,  too 
widespread,  to  be  dismissed  as  mere  curious 
variations  of  morbid  growth.  But  when  we 
take  them  in  their  place  in  this  vast  orderly  evo- 
lution of  human  nature,  why,  their  place  is  the 


298  THE    INSPIRATIONS    OF    SCIENCE 

topmost  and  the  surest  place.  "  Evolution " 
not  only  permits  us  so  to  view  them,  but  com- 
pels us  to  do  so,  unless  our  v^hole  process  of 
thinking  is  to  be  put  to  confusion.  Evolution 
surely,  guarantees  its  own  best  and  permanent 
results.  Man  is  the  meaning  of  the  whole.  The 
Mind  is  the  meaning  of  man;  and  among  the 
qualities  of  mind,  surely  those  are  the  highest 
in  which  he  rises  to  the  sense  of  duty  and  dares 
to  think  of  faith  in  God  and  in  a  further  life  to 
come. 

Consider  this  last  thought  for  a  moment,  for 
it  is  on  this  that  thinking  people  have  become 
most  confused  and  discouraged  to-day,  the  ques- 
tion of  life  to  come;  and  it  is  on  this  that  any 
large  thought  of  Evolution  seems  to  me  to  have 
an  absolute  inspiration.  Look  at  it  as  a  mere 
academic  question  of  to-day,  and  there  is  a  good 
deal  to  be  said  on  both  sides.  Certainly,  the 
further  life  has  never  been  proved.  No  certain 
voice  comes  to  us  across  the  void.  The  prompt- 
ings of  nature,  as  you  and  I  may  feel  them  to- 
day, are  vague  and  ill-defined.  No  one  has 
ever  traced  the  vital  spark  beyond  the  body's 
life,  or  even  found  it  as  anything  distinct  at  all. 
No!  but  just  here,  where  all  our  observations  of 
to-day  seem  somehow  to  fail  us,  comes  in  the 
significance  of  Evolution.     Look  at  the  thought 


THE   INSPIRATIONS   OF   SCIENCE  299 

of  further  life  in  the  long  development  of  man. 
It  is  no  tardy  conclusion  from  fragmentary  ar- 
guments, but  part  of  the  mighty  chain  of  ten- 
dency. You  trace  something  of  it  as  long  as 
you  can  trace  man  at  all.  Goldwin  Smith  has 
lately  written  one  of  the  most  trenchant  criti- 
cisms of  all  the  common  arguments  for  life  to 
come;  but  at  the  end  he  admits  that  "  there  does 
seem  to  be  a  voice  in  every  man  which,  if  he  will 
listen  to  it,  tells  him  that  his  account  is  not 
closed  at  death."  He  seems  to  regard  this  as 
only  a  slight  concession,  indeed;  but  really,  in 
the  light  of  this  vast  orderly  Evolution,  it  carries 
the  whole  thing.  What  is  it  that  puts  in  man 
those  faint  dim  tendencies  which  keep  pushing 
him  on  a  little  and  a  little  more  along  those  lines 
of  character  which  lead  on  through  incalculable 
ages  from  the  savage  to  the  sage  and  saint  ?  It  is 
not  mere  desire.  Why,  oftentimes  this  sense  of 
further  life  has  taken  forms  which  have  been  a 
dread  and  made  man  long  not  to  be.  To  use 
again  that  saying  of  Dr.  Martineau's  ''  Man 
does  not  believe  in  immortality  because  he  has 
ever  proved  it ;  but  he  is  for  ever  trying  to  prove 
it  because  he  cannot  help  believing  it."  It  is 
part  of  his  evolution.  And  this  great  Nature, 
which  does  not  evolve  an  instinct  in  the  meanest 
insect   without   something   to   correspond   to   it, 


300  THE   INSPIRATIONS   OF   SCIENCE 

may   we   not   trust   it   in   the   greatest   thought 
which  it  has  evolved  in  the  heart  of  man? 

And  just  here  comes  in  one  more  of  these  In- 
spirations of  Science.  For  see ;  all  through  man's 
thinking  of  what  he  has  called  "  soul,"  of 
whether  there  is  such  a  thing  and  of  whether  it 
is  to  live  again,  he  has  kept  groping  about  among 
the  resources  and  possibilities  of  the  material 
body  and  the  material  world.  Especially  he  has 
been  hampered  by  the  difficulty  of  conceiving  of 
life  not  resident  in  and  continued  in  some  body. 
How  shall  this  life  of  mine  continue  to  be  in  this 
personal  consciousness  which  alone  would  be 
any  real  immortality,  if  this  material  body 
through  which  it  acts  and  feels,  is  simply  dis- 
solved and  ended?  I  do  not  know;  and  once, 
that  "  I  do  not  know  "  seemed  a  grave  argu- 
ment against  any  such  continuity.  But  how  is 
it  to-day?  Why,  science  itself  has  simply  risen 
above  all  that  apparatus  of  investigation  and  rea- 
soning which  used  to  feel  limited  by  the  re- 
sources of  matter.  Science  itself  has  passed  be- 
yond materialism.  In  its  finer  researches  to- 
day it  is  moving  freely  and  confidently  among 
elements  which  are  just  as  indiscoverable  by  any 
direct  perception  as  life  or  soul  in  man,  or  as 
God  in  nature.  Its  most  fixed  terms  are  turn- 
ing out  to  be  mere  algebraic  symbols.     We  do 


THE   INSPIRATIONS   OF   SCIENCE  3OI 

not  even  know  what  matter  is,  or  whether  it  is 
any  real  thing,  or  merely  a  succession  of  ideas 
or  impressions  such  as  we  have  in  dreams,  which 
yet  seem  so  real.  This  electricity,  what  is  it  — 
of  which  no  one  can  say  whether  it  is  a  substance 
or  a  force?  This  ether,  which  no  eye  has  ever 
seen,  nor  finest  instruments  detected  its  pres- 
ence, and  yet  which  scientists  are  agreed  must 
exist,  pervading  even  the  mass  of  steel  or  stone, 
among  the  particles  like  air  among  the  separate 
lumps  in  a  coal  heap,  and  equally  filling  the  vast 
interstellar  spaces?  Or  these  ''X  Rays"  own- 
ing in  their  very  name  how  utterly  beyond  all 
previous  conception  they  are?  Life?  What 
difficulty  can  there  be  about  life  or  life's  con- 
tinuance when  all  thought  of  the  mere  body  and 
of  matter  and  substance  together,  is  widened  out 
by  facts  like  these?  Once  be  sure  that  life  is, 
at  all  —  that  you  and  I  are  points  of  conscious 
life  —  and  that  "  conscious  life  "  is  the  most 
wonderful  and  most  tremendous  thing  in  the 
Universe,  and  there  is  no  difficulty  about  its 
continuance,  if  its  own  mysterious  nature  and 
tendency  seem  to  point  that  way. 

Ah,  no!  The  real,  greatest  wonder  is  not 
how  personal  life  should  continue,  but  how  it 
ever  came  to  be.  But  having  come  to  be,  and 
having  evolved  into  this  consciousness  of  self 


302  THE   INSPIRATIONS   OF   SCIENCE 

and  ability  to  look  into  the  universe  and  into  it- 
self; and  all  the  way  impelled  towards  goodness 
and  towards  the  worship  of  some  higher  power, 
let  us  tread  confidently  on,  sure  that  this  Uni- 
verse is  verily  the  expression  of  that  higher 
power  and  is  not  going  to  land  us  in  chaos  or 
intellectual  confusion. 

Even  Paul,  in  that  old  time  when  men  had 
spelled  their  way  into  so  little  of  the  universe, 
thought  that  enough  was  seen  for  men  to  glorify 
the  invisible  power  and  Divinity :  "  The  invisible 
things  of  Him  from  the  creation  of  the  world 
are  clearly  seen,  being  understood  by  the  things 
which  are  made."  How  much  more  so  now! 
This  is  the  inspiration  with  all  this  wonderful 
science  of  our  time  enriches  and  clears  my  mind. 
It  lifts  me  clear  out  of  the  half-meaning  and  con- 
fusion of  the  moment  to  a  great  height,  from 
which  I  see  the  whole  creation  ever  moving  on, 
in  orderly  growth,  even  the  mere  earth  coming 
ever  to  a  nobler  type;  and  the  creatures  that 
somehow  grew  up  in  it  developing  through  awful 
silences  of  time  from  beast  to  man;  and  man 
growing  from  man  the  savage  into  man  the 
thinker,  and  growing  still  in  conscience,  affec- 
tion, worship,  faith ;  and  ever,  part  of  that  faith, 
the  looking  on  to  greater  life  still  beyond.  And 
then   just   when    such    soaring   thought   seemed 


THE    INSPIRATIONS    OF    SCIENCE  3O3 

blocked  and  contradicted  by  the  poor  limitations 
of  the  body  and  the  earth,  science  rends  the  veil, 
shows  us  the  dull,  hard,  matter  that  seemed  to 
hold  us  prisoners,  as  a  mere  ethereal  texture,  free 
to  all  the  purposes  of  God  and  for  whatever  may 
be  his  uses  and  destinies  for  man. 

Yes,  these  are  inspirations,  inspirations  to  man 
to  lift  himself  up  from  the  ground;  to  trust  his 
higher  nature,  and,  even  in  the  commonest  lot 
in  which  he  has  to  live,  to  walk  with  a  great  faith 
in  God,  and  a  great  up-reaching  heart  of  won- 
dering adoration. 


Princeton  Theological  Seminary  Libraries 


1012  01246  9864 


